- Baixuan Xu: Department of Nuclear Medicine, PLA General Hospital, Beijing 100853, P.R.China.
BACKGROUND: To evaluate the diagnostic significance of FDG PET in preoperative mediastinal lymph node staging for NSCLC.
METHODS: Whole-body FDG PET imaging was performed in 70 patients with NSCLC. All patients received thoracic CT examination 2 weeks before PET scan or 1 week after PET scan, and then were given thoracotomy with hilar and mediastinal lymph nodes dissection. After intravenous administration of 18F-FDG (150μCi/kg), PET scan was performed in 3-7 bed positions with 2D acquisition and OSEM reconstruction. For quantitative evaluation, a region of interest (ROI) was placed over the mediastinal lymph node which had abnormal uptake of radiation activity, then the standardized uptake value (SUV) were calculated. If SUV≥2.5 or uptake activity was higher than the blood pool of mediastinal on the basis of visual inspection, it was considered to be positive.
RESULTS: The sensitivity, specificity and accuracy of PET were 100%, 93% and 94%, respectively. The positive lymph nodes diagnosed by PET correctly corresponded to pathological results. PET changed the clinical staging of 12 patients. The sensitivity, specificity and accuracy of CT were 70%, 77% and 76%, respectively.
CONCLUSIONS: PET is an effective modality for accurate mediastinal lymph node staging in patients with NSCLC. It is valuable for determining clinical treatment.