Metabolic neuroimaging of the cervical spinal cord in patients with compressive myelopathy: a high-resolution positron emission tomography study.
OBJECTIVE
The authors conducted a study to examine whether high-resolution [18F]fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG)-positron emission tomography (PET) could be used to visualize deterioration of cervical spinal cord function associated with various degrees of compression and to determine its potential usefulness during assessment of compressive myelopathy.


METHODS
In 23 patients requiring decompressive surgery for myelopathy FDG-PET was performed. The preoperative findings of high-resolution FDG-PET were compared with the neurological scores and magnetic resonance (MR) imaging findings. The preoperative standardized uptake value (SUV) of FDG utilization rate of the cervical cord correlated with the pre- (r = 0.497, p = 0.016) and postoperative neurological scores (r = 0.595, p = 0.003), as well as with the rate of neurological improvement postoperatively (r = 0.538, p = 0.008). The FDG utilization rate did not correlate with the high signal intensity on T2-weighted MR images.


CONCLUSIONS
Analysis of these results indicates that high-resolution FDG-PET imaging provides useful qualitative and quantitative estimates of impaired metabolic activity of the compromised cervical cord that correlate closely with the severity of neurological dysfunction.
Department of Orthopaedics and Rehabilitation Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, and Biomedical Imaging Research Center, University of Fukui, Matsuoka, Fukui, Japan. kuchida@fmsrsa.fukui-med.ac.jp
Kenzo
K
Uchida
Shigeru
S
Kobayashi
Takafumi
T
Yayama
Yasuo
Y
Kokubo
Hideaki
H
Nakajima
Michiko
M
Kakuyama
Norihiro
N
Sadato
Tatsuro
T
Tsuchida
Yoshiharu
Y
Yonekura
Hisatoshi
H
Baba
D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D002574:Cervical Vertebrae; D019299:Decompression, Surgical; D005260:Female; D019788:Fluorodeoxyglucose F18; D006801:Humans; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D011300:Preoperative Care; D013117:Spinal Cord Compression / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging* / Q000378:metabolism / Q000601:surgery; D014055:Tomography, Emission-Computed / Q000379:methods*
D019788:Fluorodeoxyglucose F18