ORIGINAL ARTICLES   

The Quarterly Journal of Nuclear Medicine 2003 June;47(2):101-8

Copyright © 2009 EDIZIONI MINERVA MEDICA

language: English

Hodgkin’s disease. Prognostic value of Gallium-67 scintigraphy

Hervás I. ¹, Segura A. ², López-Tendero P. ², Bello P. ¹, González-Cabezas P. ¹, Flores D. ¹, Yuste A. ², Pérez-Velasco R. ¹, Girones R. ², Mateo A. ¹

¹ Department of Nuclear Medicine “La Fe” University Hospital, Valencia, Spain 2 Department of Oncology “La Fe” University Hospital, Valencia, Spain

Aim. The aim of ­this ­study is to ­assess the clin­i­cal ­impact of gal­li­um-67 scin­tig­ra­phy, ­before and ­after treat­ment, in ­patients ­with Hodgkin’s dis­ease, and to com­pare the over­all sur­vi­val ­between the ­patients ­whose gal­li­um stud­ies ­after treat­ment ­were neg­a­tive and ­those ­whose stud­ies ­remained pos­i­tive.
Methods. We ­have stud­ied 75 ­patients (40 wom­en, 35 men) ­with Hodgkin’s dis­ease. All the ­patients under­went 67Ga scin­tig­ra­phy at the ­moment of the diag­no­sis (­basal ­study) and in the ­case ­that ­basal ­study was pos­i­tive (abnor­mal hyp­er-­uptake ­focus) we per­formed fol­low-up stud­ies ­after the treat­ment. We ­have cal­cu­lat­ed the over­all sur­vi­val amo­ng ­patients ­whose stud­ies ­after treat­ment ­were neg­a­tive (1st ­group) and ­those ­whose stud­ies ­remained pos­i­tive (2nd ­group) and ­between ­patients ­whose stud­ies ­were neg­a­tive at diag­no­sis (­3rd ­group).
Results. Gallium scin­tig­ra­phy was pos­i­tive at diag­no­sis in 47 ­patients (62.6%). In 39 of ­them we ­were ­able to per­form the fol­low-up ­study ­after treat­ment. The fol­low-up ­study was neg­a­tive in 31 ­patients ­while in 8 ­patients the gal­li­um scin­tig­ra­phy ­remained pos­i­tive. The over­all sur­vi­val was sig­nif­i­cant­ly high­er (p<0.001) in the 1st ­group com­pared ­with the 2nd ­group. The over­all sur­vi­val was high­er in the 1st ­group com­pared ­with the 3rd but sta­tis­tic sig­nif­i­cance lev­el was not ­reached.
Conclusion. Our ­data sug­gest ­that: 1) in Hodgkin’s dis­ease 67Ga scin­tig­ra­phy is use­ful to estab­lish the diag­no­sis of com­plete remis­sion; 2) if the gal­li­um ­scan ­remains pos­i­tive ­after treat­ment, the prog­no­sis of ­patients is ­worse ­than the prog­no­sis of ­patients ­with a neg­a­tive ­scan.