Therapy management in rectal carcinoma by staging with 18-FDG-PET

The curative treatment of carcinoma of the rectum in the early stage of the disease is radical local surgery. If there is a solitary liver metastasis, resection is also a curative treatment. This report describes a female-pat ient with rectal carcinoma, in whom a solitary liver metastasis in the left lobe was diagnosed only by FDG-PET and verified at surgery. This case repo rt demonstrates the potential role of FDG-PET even for primary staging in d etecting occult hepatic and extrahepatic metastases, thus significantly inf luencing the therapeutic management and prognosis of these patients.