NUCLEAR MEDICINE AND ONCOLOGY 

The Quarterly Journal of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging 2004 June;48(2):164-73

Copyright © 2009 EDIZIONI MINERVA MEDICA

language: English

Position of nuclear medicine techniques in the diagnostic work-up of neuroendocrine tumors

Demir H. ¹, Berk F. ¹, Raderer M. ², Plowman P. N. ³, Lassen U. ⁴, Daugaard G. ⁴, Clausen M. ⁵, Bohuslavizki K. H. ⁵, Peters M. ⁶, Harmer C. ⁷, Malamitsi J. ⁸, Aktolun C. ¹

¹ Department of Nuclear Medicine Kocaeli University School of Medicine, Kocaeli, Turkey 2 Division of Oncology, Department of Internal Medicine,University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria 3 Department of Oncology, St. Barthelomews Hospital London, UK 4 Department of Oncology, The Finsen Centre Copenhagen University Hospital, Copehagen, Denmark 5 Department of Nuclear Medicine University Hospital Hamburg-Eppendorf, Hamburg, Germany 6 Department of Nuclear Medicine, Addenbrookes Hospital Cambridge University, Cambridge, UK 7 Department of Oncology, Royal Marsden Hospital, Sutton, UK 8 Department of Nuclear Medicine University of Athens, Athens, Greece

Cancer of ­unknown ori­gin (CUO) is ­defined by the ­absence of any pri­mary ­tumour in biop­sy-proved met­a­stat­ic can­cer. CUO ­accounts for a 5-10% of all malig­nan­cies. These ­tumors ­have a spe­cif­ic biol­o­gy ­with clin­i­cal char­ac­ter­is­tics of rap­id pro­gres­sion and atyp­i­cal metas­ta­ses. Diagnostic eval­u­a­tion is direct­ed at the iden­tifi­ca­tion of treat­able sub­set. Accurate diag­nos­tic work­up is cru­cial ­because ­both prog­no­sis and sur­vi­val ­rates ­depend main­ly on detec­tion of the pri­mary ­tumor ­site. Although ­these ­patients under­go exten­sive imag­ing pro­ce­dures, nucle­ar med­i­cine tech­niques are ­under-uti­lized ­despite ­their abil­ity of pro­vid­ing molec­u­lar infor­ma­tion. Positron emis­sion tomog­ra­phy has an emerg­ing ­role in ­this clin­i­cal chal­lenge ­along ­with oth­er nucle­ar med­i­cine meth­ods includ­ing, ­bone ­scan, thy­roid scin­tig­ra­phy.