Reproducibility of PET brain mapping of cancer patients

Twenty German cancer patients (56.9 +/- 12.7 years old) without brain metas tasis underwent neurological PET. The acquired brain data were compared to the data of ten age and sex-matched controls (53.6 +/- 15.7). Scores of Zun g's Self-rating Depression Scale (SDS) obtained from 15 out of the 20 patie nts suggested they might be mildly depressed. Scores of Taylor's Manifest A nxiety Scale (MAS), used for additional psychological evaluation, were clos e to normal distribution. Hypometabolic areas in the German cancer patients were compared with those demonstrated in our previous study in Japanese cancer patients. Common find ings in both studies were observed in the limbic structures, such as the an terior and posterior cingulate gyri, the basolateral frontal cortices, as w ell as in the basal ganglia (especially the caudate nucleus) and frontal co rtex. These results are in accordance with many previous PET studies on maj or depression. The results show that the positron emission tomography and F-18-fluoro-deox yglucose ((18)FDG-PET) brain mapping results could be partially reproduced, and suggest that PET brain mapping of cancer patients has a potential clin ical application to the field of psyche-oncology and cancer patient care. C opyright (C) 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.