Colorectal cancer patients before resection of hepatic metastases. Impact of (18)F-FDG PET on detecting extrahepatic disease.
OBJECTIVE
Evaluation of the role of FDG-PET in comparison to conventional staging methods for detecting extrahepatic tumour deposits prior to resection of liver metastases.


METHODS
In our prospective study, 58 patients (24 women, 34 men; age 33-81 years) with liver metastases of colorectal carcinoma underwent FDG-PET. Images were acquired in 3D-mode including transmission scans and reconstructed iteratively. For conventional staging all patients underwent abdominal ultrasound, helical computed tomography (CT) of the thorax and abdomen, and colonoscopy/rectoscopy. A preliminary therapeutic decision was established without knowledge of the FDG-PET findings. Thereafter, it was revised or confirmed according to the results of FDG-PET.


RESULTS
In 3/58 patients extrahepatic tumour deposits were concordantly identified with both conventional staging methods and FDG-PET. However, in one case, both conventional methods and FDG-PET were false positive regarding pulmonary metastases. In 12/58 patients, nothing but FDG-PET detected extrahepatic tumour masses, which were later confirmed either by histology or follow-up.


CONCLUSIONS
Our study suggests that in 21% of patients exclusively FDG-PET is an appropriate diagnostic tool to reveal extrahepatic metastases or local recurrence of colorectal carcinoma. Our results demonstrate that FDG-PET provides relevant additional information for accurate therapeutic planning as compared to the conventional combination of staging methods. Therefore, FDG-PET has to exert a decisive influence on the decision for resection of hepatic metastases.
Department of Nuclear Medicine, LMU Munich. rosa@nuk.med.uni-muenchen.de
F
F
Rosa
G
G
Meimarakis
A
A
Stahl
R
R
Bumm
K
K
Hahn
K
K
Tatsch
S
S
Dresel
D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D015179:Colorectal Neoplasms / Q000473:pathology*; D005260:Female; D019788:Fluorodeoxyglucose F18 / Q000493:pharmacokinetics; D006801:Humans; D008113:Liver Neoplasms / Q000532:radiotherapy* / Q000556:secondary*; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009367:Neoplasm Staging; D019275:Radiopharmaceuticals / Q000493:pharmacokinetics; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D014018:Tissue Distribution; D014055:Tomography, Emission-Computed
D019275:Radiopharmaceuticals; D019788:Fluorodeoxyglucose F18