PET IN ONCOLOGY
Guest Editor: I. Carrio 

The Quarterly Journal of Nuclear Medicine 2001 September;45(3):231-4

Copyright © 2009 EDIZIONI MINERVA MEDICA

lingua: Inglese

PET in lung cancer staging

Coleman R. E.

From the Department of Radiology Duke University Medical Center Durham, North Carolina, USA

The pri­mary clin­i­cal appli­ca­tion of FDG-PET is in the eval­u­a­tion of ­patients ­with ­lung can­cer and ­includes diag­no­sis, stag­ing and restag­ing of non-­small ­cell ­lung can­cer. PET has a ­very ­high accu­ra­cy (sen­si­tiv­ity = 97%, spec­i­fic­ity = 78%) for char­ac­ter­iz­ing nod­ules ­that are inde­ter­mi­nate by ­chest radio­graph and com­put­ed tomog­ra­phy. The ­major util­ity of PET in the eval­u­a­tion of ­patients ­with ­lung can­cer is the stag­ing of the ­entire ­body. PET is ­more accu­rate ­than the con­ven­tion­al imag­ing modal­ities of CT and ­bone ­scans in the detec­tion of met­a­stat­ic dis­ease. PET is accu­rate in the stag­ing of the med­i­as­ti­num, adren­al ­glands, and the skel­e­tal ­system. PET is not as accu­rate in the detec­tion of ­brain metas­ta­ses ­because of ­their ­small ­size and the nor­mal cor­ti­cal accu­mu­la­tion.