• Kimiteru Ito, Jyunkichi Yokoyama, Kazuo Kubota, and Miyako Morooka.
• Department of Nuclear Medicine, Saitama Medical University International Medical Cente, Hidaka City, Saitama prefecture, Japan. itoukimiteru@yahoo.co.jp
• Nucl Med Commun. 2010 Nov 1; 31 (11): 931-7.

ObjectiveThe aim of this retrospective study was to evaluate the usefulness of F-fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG) and C-choline positron emission tomography (PET)/computed tomography (CT) for detecting recurrences of nonsquamous cell head and neck malignancies after chemotherapy and radiotherapy.MethodFourteen patients (10 men and four women; mean age: 53.7 ± 14.5 years) with advanced nonsquamous cell head and neck malignancies other than squamous cell carcinoma were recruited. F-FDG and C-choline PET/CT examinations were performed in all the patients after chemotherapy and radiotherapy. The PET/CT images were evaluated using a visual analysis and a region-based analysis. After the posttreatment PET/CT examination, all the patients underwent further surveillance using the conventional imaging methods.ResultsRecurrences were eventually confirmed in eight patients after the posttreatment PET/CT examination. The region-based analysis showed that the maximum standardized uptake values for F-FDG and C-choline were strongly correlated with each other (R=0.84). The C-choline PET/CT clearly detected the lesions in two patients, one with severe diabetes mellitus and one with a brain lesion.ConclusionThe abilities of F-FDG and C-choline PET/CT to detect lesions were almost the same in this study. In addition, choline has a superior potential for imaging skull base and intracranial lesions because the normal brain is not choline avid.

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