The Role of PET/CT in Loco-Regional Assessment of Patients with Recently Diagnosed Breast Cancer
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- Category: Vol. 85, December 2017
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The Role of PET/CT in Loco-Regional Assessment of Patients with Recently Diagnosed Breast Cancer, NAGLAA M. ABD EL-RAZEK, MOHAMMED R.M. ABD EL-MAGEED and DOAA M. NABIL
Abstract
Background: Cancer breast is the most common non-skin cancer and the second leading cause of cancer related death in women. Cancer breast affects women of all ages, races, ethnicities, socioeconomic strata, and geographic locales.
Cancer staging is essential in determination of the choice of therapy, as well as patient's prognosis and chances for survival.
Conventional imaging modalities give a good data regard-ing the primary breast cancer site and extent of the disease yet they cannot precisely detect axillary lymph node involve-ment and/or the presence of distant metastases, which signif-icantly change therapeutic management of these patients. Whole-body 18F-Fluorodeoxyglucose (18F-FDG) Positron Emission Tomography-Computed Tomography (PET/CT) has proven to be an effective imaging modality for staging of the malignant tumors through the entire body in a single exami-nation.
A total number of 51 female patients with recently diag-nosed breast cancer were included in the study with age range from 27 to 78 years, and were coming for pre-operative or pre-therapeutic PET CT study assessment.
Results: Our study included 51 patients with recently diagnosed breast cancer, and it has shown that combined PET/CT was superior to CT alone in detection of the primary breast cancer with sensitivity 98.11% compared to 81.7% for CT alone.
Detection of metastatic axillary and internal mammary lymph nodes was improved by combined PET/CT which detected metastatic axillary lymph nodes in 33 patients and metastatic internal mammary lymph nodes in 9 patients compared to 23 and 4 patients showing positive axillary and internal mammary nodal involvement respectively by CT alone.