Semi-quantitative analysis of 99mTc-sestamibi retention level for preoperative differential diagnosis of parathyroid carcinoma

BACKGROUND: To investigate the role of (99m)Tc-labeled sestamibi ((99m)Tc-MIBI) retention level in the assessment of malignant potential of parathyroid lesions. METHODS: Twenty patients with parathyroid carcinomas and forty controls with benign parathyroid lesions who underwent preoperatively (99m)Tc-MIBI dual-phase planar and SPECT/CT imaging were retrospectively enrolled in this study. The mean and peak of retention index (RI(mean) and RI(peak)) were measured for evaluating the retention level of (99m)Tc-MIBI in the parathyroid lesions. Diagnostic accuracies of RI for differentiating malignant parathyroid lesions from benign ones were assessed by receiver operating characteristic analyses (area under the curve; AUC). RESULTS: RI(peak) (AUC =0.87, P