NEUROENDOCRINE TUMORS
Guest Editors: Bombardieri E. 

The Quarterly Journal of Nuclear Medicine 2000 March;44(1):42-49

Copyright © 2009 EDIZIONI MINERVA MEDICA

lingua: Inglese

Results and potential of somatostatin receptor imaging in gastroenteropancreatic tract tumours

Chiti A., Briganti V. *, Fanti S. **, Monetti N. **, Masi R. *, Bombardieri E.

From the Nuclear Medicine Division Istituto Nazionale per lo Studio e la Cura dei Tumori, Milano, Italy *Unità Operativa Medicina Nucleare Azienda Ospedaliera Careggi, Firenze, Italy **Unità Operativa Medicina Nucleare Policlinico S. Orsola Malpighi, Bologna, Italy

Background. Somatostatin recep­tor imag­ing ­with 111In-pen­tet­re­o­tide is wide­ly accept­ed as an essen­tial ­step in the man­age­ment of ­patients affect­ed by neu­ro­en­do­crine ­tumours of the gas­tro-ente­ro-pan­creat­ic ­tract. Many ­data are ­already avail­able on the ­high sen­si­tiv­ity of ­this tech­nique.
Methods. We ­present a ­review of the pub­lished ­data togeth­er ­with the ­results of a ­study involv­ing 253 ­patients sub­mit­ted to som­a­tos­ta­tin recep­tor imag­ing in ­three Italian hos­pi­tals. The ­patients ­were divid­ed ­into two ­groups treat­ed ­with dif­fer­ent acqui­si­tion and pro­cess­ing pro­to­cols.
Results. The over­all sen­si­tiv­ity was as ­high as (169/176) 96% in ­both ­groups, ­while the spec­i­fic­ity was high­er in the ­group in ­which ­semi-quan­ti­ta­tive eval­u­a­tion of som­a­tos­ta­tin recep­tor den­sity was per­formed: (23/26) 88% vs (39/51) 76%. The use of ­this meth­od is rec­om­mend­ed to ­increase the spec­i­fic­ity of 111In-pen­tet­re­o­tide imag­ing.
Conclusions. Our ­results ­with som­a­tos­ta­tin recep­tor imag­ing in neu­ro­en­do­crine ­tumours of the gas­tro-ente­ro-pan­creat­ic ­tract dem­on­strate ­that all fig­ures of mer­it are excel­lent ­when imag­ing is accu­rate­ly per­formed and ana­lysed by expe­ri­enced oper­a­tors.