What’s New in PET/CT

Effectiveness of 18F-FDG PET/CT in the diagnosis, staging and recurrence monitoring of Ewing sarcoma family of tumors: A meta-analysis of 23 studies.

PET/CT Updates, Research & Education
July 2019

Purpose

To investigate the value of positron emission tomography (PET) and PET/computed tomography (CT) using fluorine-18-fluorodeoxyglucose (F-FDG) in the diagnosis, staging, restaging and recurrence monitoring of Ewing sarcoma family of tumors (ESFTs), a meta-analysis was performed through systematically searching PubMed, Embase, and Cochrane Central library to retrieve articles.

Methods

After screening and diluting out the articles that met inclusion criteria to be used for statistical analysis the pooled evaluation indexes including sensitivity, specificity, and diagnostic odd ratio (DOR) as well as the summary receiver operating characteristic curve (SROC) were calculated involving diagnostic data (true positive, false positive, false negative, and true negative) extracted from original studies.

Results

Screening determined that out of 2007, 23 studies involving a total of 524 patients were deemed viable for inclusion in the meta-analysis. The results of the analysis showed that the sensitivity and specificity were at 86% and 80%, respectively. Additionally, a satisfactory accuracy of F-FDG PET and PET/CT was observed in detecting ESFT recurrence, lung metastasis, and osseous metastasis.

Conclusion

This meta-analysis suggests that F-FDG PET and PET/CT with an extremely high accuracy could be considered a valuable method for detecting distant metastasis and post-operational recurrence of ESFT, which might have a profound impact on the development of treatment protocols for ESFT.

Source: Medicine (Baltimore). 2018 Nov;97(48):e13457. doi: 10.1097/MD.0000000000013457.
< https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30508968 > Retrieved 8 July 2019.

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July Sarcoma Awareness Month

  • Soft-tissue sarcoma (STS) is a group of cancers that begin in the connective tissues that support and connect the body, and is the most common of all sarcomas
  • This year, about 12,750 people will be diagnosed with STS in the United States
  • 60% of sarcomas begin in an arm or leg, 30% start in the torso or abdomen, and 10% occur in the head or neck

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