The detection rates and tumor clinical/pathological stages of whole-body FDG-PET cancer screening.
OBJECTIVE
FDG-PET has been used for cancer screening, mainly in East-Asia, and cancers are found not infrequently. However, their stages have not been clarified. We examined the detection rates of various cancers using whole-body PET for the screening of cancers in asymptomatic individuals, focusing on their clinical and pathological stages.


METHODS
Whole-body PET was obtained as a part of our cancer screening program among 3,426 healthy subjects. All subjects participated in a course of PET examination in conjunction with conventional examinations including a medical questionnaire, tumor markers, immunological fecal occult blood test, neck and abdominal ultrasonography and whole body computed tomography. A diagnosis and staging was obtained by an analysis of the pathological findings or by an analysis of the clinical follow-up data.


RESULTS
Malignant tumors were discovered in 65 lesions found in 3,426 participants (1.90%). The PET findings were true-positive in 46 of the 65 cancer cases. The cancers were found in the following organs: the colon 14; thyroid gland 10; stomach 7; lung 5; liver 3; breast 2; and one each in the kidney, gallbladder, esophagus, pancreas and retroperitoneum. The stages were as follows: stage 0 5, stage I 17, stage II 10, stage III 7, and stage IV 6. One was an unknown primary. There were 19 false-negative findings (0.6%) on PET. Six cancers (0.18%) were missed in our screening program.


CONCLUSIONS
PET imaging has the potential to detect a wide variety of cancers at potentially curative stages. Most PET-negative cancers are early stage cancers, and thus can be detected using other conventional examinations such as endoscopy.
Ono
Ken
K
Department of Radiology, Tenjin-Kai Shin-Koga Hospital, 120 Tenjin-cho, Kurume 830-8577, Japan. ken_ono_skhp@yahoo.co.jp
Ochiai
Reiji
R
Yoshida
Tsuyoshi
T
Kitagawa
Mami
M
Omagari
Junichi
J
Kobayashi
Hisashi
H
Yamashita
Yasuyuki
Y
D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D005260:Female; D019788:Fluorodeoxyglucose F18; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008403:Mass Screening; D008875:Middle Aged; D009369:Neoplasms / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000473:pathology; D049268:Positron-Emission Tomography; D012720:Severity of Illness Index; D051598:Whole Body Imaging
D019788:Fluorodeoxyglucose F18