• Bagwant Rai Mittal, Kuruva Manohar, Raghava Kashyap, Anish Bhattacharya, Baljinder Singh, and Gurpreet Singh.
• Department of Nuclear Medicine and General Surgery, Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research, 160 012 Chandigarh, India. brmittal@yahoo.com
• Hell J Nucl Med. 2011 May 1; 14 (2): 135-9.

AbstractLocally advanced breast cancer (LABC) is a distinct entity in breast carcinoma with high incidence of distant metastases (M). However, there is scarce data in the literature addressing the role of fluorine-18-fluorodeoxyglucose-positron emission tomography/computed tomography ((18)F-FDG PET/CT) in LABC. This study was performed to assess the sensitivity of (18)F-FDG PET/CT in confirming known lymph nodal and M and in identifying new ones in LABC. We performed a retrospective analysis of data of 16 patients with LABC who underwent histopathology, for the diagnosis of LABC and clinical examination, chest X-rays, ultrasound of the abdomen and whole body bone scans. Findings for M obtained by all the above examinations were compared to the (18)F-FDG PET/CT findings that followed. Lymph nodal and distant metastases detected by all other examinations were detected by (18)F-FDG PET/CT in all patients, except subcentimetric metastases in 2 patients in the axilla that were detected in another examination later. Additionally, (18)F-FDG PET/CT identified unknown ipsilateral, supraclavicular, internal mammary metastases and upstaged disease in 3 patients and additional distant metastases were noted in 3/16 patients. In conclusion, our study suggests that more extra axillary lymph nodal and distant metastases can be identified by (18)F-FDG PET/CT as compared to a group of clinical, X-rays, ultrasound and bone scan examinations together.

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