The Role of PET/CT in Detection of Distant Metastasis in 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 Detection of Distant Metastasis in Patients with Recently Diagnosed Breast Cancer, NAGLAA M. ABD EL-RAZEK, MOHAMMED R.M. ABD EL-MAGEED and AMR A.H. GADALLA
Abstract
Background: Breast cancer is the most common non-skin cancer and the second leading cause of cancer related death in women. Breast cancer strikes women of all ages, races, ethnicities, socioeconomic strata, and geographic locales.
Cancer staging is essential in determining 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 staging by PET CT study.
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 deposits through the lung, visceral organs, contralateral axillary and extra-axillary lymph nodes as well as bony skeleton was improved by combined PET/CT which detect 25 patients with positive distant metastatic deposits compared to 17 patients detected by CT alone.
Conclusion: Combined PET/CT is a single valuable tool provides whole-body overview evaluation for loco-regional assessment of patients with recently diagnosed breast cancer, providing valuable information regarding presence of distant metastases. PET/CT proved to be an efficient, accurate and non-invasive imaging technique in staging of the disease which is reflected on the patients' management planes.