European journal of nuclear medicine
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Comparative Study Clinical Trial
Whole-body positron emission tomography using fluorodeoxyglucose for staging of lymphoma: effectiveness and comparison with computed tomography.
The purpose of this study was to evaluate whole-body positron emission tomography (WB-PET) as a staging modality in Hodgkin's disease (HD) and non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL) and to compare it with computed tomography (CT) in a retrospective study. Seventy-one WB-PET studies using fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG) and 49 CT examinations were performed in 19 women and 31 men. Transaxial images were acquired and reformatted coronally and sagittally in PET. ⋯ FDG tumour uptake was found in high- as well as low-grade NHL patients. In conclusion, PET appears to be highly sensitive and specific for staging of lymphoma. It is at least as sensitive as CT, and more specific, particularly in patients undergoing restaging, where a well-recognized diagnostic dilemma in CT is the presence of a post-therapeutic residual mass.