• Vera Wenter, Jan-Phillip Müller, Nathalie L Albert, Sebastian Lehner, Wolfgang P Fendler, Peter Bartenstein, Clemens C Cyran, Jan Friederichs, Matthias Militz, Marcus Hacker, and Sven Hungerer.
• Department of Nuclear Medicine, University of Munich, Munich, Germany.
• Eur. J. Nucl. Med. Mol. Imaging. 2016 Apr 1; 43 (4): 749-61.

PurposeThe diagnosis of osteomyelitis and implant-associated infections in patients with nonspecific laboratory or radiological findings is often unsatisfactory. We retrospectively evaluated the contributions of [(18)F]FDG PET and [(18)F]FDG PET/CT to the diagnosis of osteomyelitis and implant-associated infections, enabling timely and appropriate decision-making for further therapy options.Methods[(18)F]FDG PET or PET/CT was performed in 215 patients with suspected osteomyelitis or implant-associated infections between 2000 and 2013. We assessed the diagnostic accuracy of both modalities together and separately with reference to intraoperative microbial findings, with a mean clinical follow-up of 69 ± 49 months.ResultsInfections were diagnosed clinically in 101 of the 215 patients. PET and PET/CT scans revealed 87 true-positive, 76 true-negative, 38 false-positive, and 14 false-negative results, indicating a sensitivity of 86 %, a specificity of 67 %, a positive predictive value (PPV) of 70 %, a negative predictive value (NPV) of 84 % and an accuracy of 76 %. The sensitivity of PET/CT was 88 %, but specificity, PPV, NPV and accuracy (76 %, 76 %, 89 % and 82 %, respectively) were higher than those of stand-alone PET.Conclusion[(18)F]FDG PET is able to identify with high sensitivity the presence of osteomyelitis in orthopaedic surgery patients with nonspecific clinical symptoms of infection.

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