European journal of nuclear medicine and molecular imaging
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Eur. J. Nucl. Med. Mol. Imaging · Mar 2018
Clinical TrialAbsolute number of new lesions on 18F-FDG PET/CT is more predictive of clinical response than SUV changes in metastatic melanoma patients receiving ipilimumab.
Evaluation of response to immunotherapy is a matter of debate. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the response of metastatic melanoma to treatment with ipilimumab by means of 18F-FDG PET/CT, using the patients' clinical response as reference. ⋯ Our results show that a cut-off of four newly emerged 18F-FDG-avid lesions on posttherapy PET/CT gives a reliable indication of treatment failure in patients under ipilimumab treatment. Moreover, the functional size of the new lesions plays an important role in predicting the clinical response. Validation of these results in larger cohorts of patients is warranted.