Founded in 1993
  Year: 2012 | Volume: 20 | Issue: 3-4 | Pages: 152-157
  Special Article
  REGISTERED AND POTENTIAL INDICATIONS OF FDG PET/CT IN BREAST CARCINOMA
Sona Balogova, Mina Vasovic, Marika Vereb, Lucia Kaliska, Jean-Noël Talbot
  DOI: 10.2298/AOO1204152B
  Abstract:
  The indication of 18F-fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG) imaging has been more disputed in breast carcinoma than in many other primary cancers (e.g. lung, head and neck, colorectal, lymphoma...) due to a limited sensitivity to detect the primary tumours in case of lobular or in situ forms or small sized tumours detected on systematic mammography, and to identify minimal node invasion in the axilla. Nevertheless dedicated PET machines are now proposed to characterise breast lesions. For staging locally advanced or restaging recurrent or metastatic breast cancer, FDG PET/CT has a good diagnostic performance. As a functional whole-body imaging modality, it is able to detect extra-axilar metastatic lymph nodes, distant metastases including in the skeleton, where it outperforms bone scintigraphy or SPECT except in case of osteoblastic lesions, or to discover second primary cancers (around 2% of cases). A potential indication is monitoring response to chemotherapy, to early detect disease resistance or progression. To summarise published results and our own experience, the breast tumour SUVmax decreases with the number of cycles in most patients, including those who will show residual disease on pathology. It is therefore best to perform FDG PET/CT at baseline and after 1 cycle of chemotherapy; the criterion for prediction of an incomplete pathologic response would be a SUVmax reduction <50%. In case of adjuvant chemotherapy, the visual interpretation of FDG PET/CT performed after 5 months may be sufficient to predict disease-free survival; the response to chemotherapy evaluated by FDG PET is a better predictor of recurrence-free survival than pathologic response.
  Key words: Breast Neoplasms; Positron-Emission Tomography and Computed Tomography; Fluorodeoxyglucose F18; Mammography; Patient Care Management
  Read full text in PDF [Full Text]
Next article

Previous article

Table of contents

Browse all Volumes

Search all Volumes
By keywords
By authors

  Search AoO for:
 

  Related articles in AoO:
 
About Journal | Editorial Board | Editorial Policy | Instructions for Authors | Open Access | Advertising | Payed issues | Article Submission Charge | Contact
Founder and owner: Oncology Institute of Vojvodina, Serbia
Publisher: Oncology Institute of Vojvodina
Co-publisher: Faculty of Medicine, University of Novi Sad
Online since 1997 (Abstracts only); 2000 (Abstracts and Full text)
ISSN: 0354-7310 eISSN: 1450-9520