Fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography for detection of recurrentor metastatic breast cancer

Fluorodeoxyglucose-positron emission tomography (FDC-PET) is a noninvasive imaging technique capable of identifying primary tumors and metastases with high sensitivity and accuracy. The aim of this study was to evaluate the d iagnostic accuracy of whole-body FDG-PET imaging for the detection of recur rent or metastatic breast cancer after surgery. Whole-body FDG-PET imaging was performed on 27 patients with suspected recurrent breast carcinoma. PET images were evaluated qualitatively for each patient and lesion, FDC-PET s cans showed that there were 61 reference sites of malignant or benign lesio ns in 27 patients. In a patient-based analysis, FDG-PET scans correctly ide ntified 16 of 17 patients with recurrent or metastatic disease and 8 of 10 without recurrence, resulting in a sensitivity, specificity, and accuracy o f 94%, 80%, and 89%, respectively, In a lesion-based analysis, FDG-PET scan s correctly identified 46 of 48 lesion sites with recurrent or metastatic d isease and 11 of 13 without recurrence. The overall sensitivity, specificit y, and accuracy for all lesion sites were 96%, 85%, and 93%, respectively. FDG-PET scans revealed unsuspected recurrent or metastatic diseases in 8 of 27 (30%) of patients and 11 of 20 (55%) distant metastatic lesions. In 13 patients treatment was altered by the outcome of the PET scan, We concluded that whole-body FDG-PET scan is a useful diagnostic imaging modality for d etecting recurrent or metastatic breast carcinoma in patients suspected of having recurrent disease after primary surgery.