Nuclear medicine communications
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The aim of this study was to assess the clinical relevance of imaging the lower limbs when using 2-(F)-fluoro-2-deoxy-D-glucose (F-FDG) positron emission tomography with computed tomography (PET/CT) for malignant cutaneous melanoma in patients without previously known or suspected primary or metastatic melanoma lesions in the lower limbs. ⋯ Our study, the largest of its kind, confirms that, when using F-FDG PET/CT for staging, restaging, or surveillance of malignant cutaneous melanoma in patients without previously known or suspected lower-limb melanoma lesions, imaging the lower extremities offers little additional clinically relevant information and stopping the scan at the proximal thighs has essentially no clinical impact.
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Prophylactic central neck dissection (pCND) is controversial in papillary thyroid carcinoma (PTC) without clinical positive lymph nodes. The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of radioactive iodine (RAI) therapy on the clinical outcome in clinically node-negative (cN0) PTC patients treated with total thyroidectomy (TT) alone or in combination with pCND. ⋯ Although the addition of pCND to TT, with a concomitant higher frequency of permanent hypoparathyroidism, upstages 40% of patients, thereby changing the dose of RAI therapy, the clinical response to RAI therapy for TT+pCND is not superior to TT alone in cN0 PTC patients.
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Benign adrenal lesions are prevalent in oncologic imaging and make metastatic disease diagnoses difficult. This study evaluates the diagnostic importance of metabolic, volumetric, and metabolovolumetric parameters measured by fluorine-18-fluorodeoxyglucose (F-FDG) PET/CT in differentiating between benign and malignant adrenal lesions in cancer patients. ⋯ Irrespective of whether TLG was statistically highly significant for differentiating benign from malignant adrenal lesions, it did not reach the expected performance with a low negative predictive value. This may be because of the malignant but small and benign but large lesions on metabolovolumetric calculation.
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PET imaging using radiotracers that target prostate-specific membrane antigen (PSMA) are increasingly being used in the evaluation of men with prostate cancer (PCa). It is therefore of increasing importance for imaging specialists to recognize potential pitfalls of this novel imaging technique. In this report, we describe a series of benign elastofibroma dorsi with uptake of the PSMA-targeted PET radiotracer F-DCFPyL. ⋯ This study is the first to report uptake of a PSMA-targeted PET radiotracer in elastofibroma dorsi. Radiotracer uptake in these benign lesions should not be falsely mistaken as sites of metastatic PCa.
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Molecular imaging of nigrostriatal dopamine transporters (DAT) and sympathetic cardiac innervation with single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) are useful tools for differentiating idiopathic Parkinson disease (PD) from other degenerative parkinsonian syndromes (non-PD). Nevertheless, these modalities are often insufficient for achieving a definite diagnosis. The aims of this study were to evaluate the diagnostic accuracy of the combination of these tools. ⋯ These results suggested that the combination of DAT SPECT and MIBG scintigraphy may improve the diagnostic accuracy in differentiating PD from non-PD.