Radionuclide imaging of thoracic malignancies
Abstract
Over the past decade a variety nuclear medicine imaging studies have become available that are of considerable value to patients who have pulmonary malignancies. By far the greatest impact on the management of patients who have thoracic malignancy has been the availability of 18FDG-PET imaging. In the patient who has newly diagnosed lung carcinoma, 18FDG-PET improves the accuracy of staging the disease by identifying or excluding mediastinal disease and distant metastatic foci. 18FDG-PET is superior to anatomic methods for evaluating the response to therapy and for distinguishing recurrent disease from posttreatment changes. Studies are in progress to evaluate the role of 18FDG-PET imaging in assessing prognosis. In patients who have bronchial carcinoid, somatostatin receptor imaging with 111In-DTPA-pentetreotide (Octreoscan) can help identify patients who are candidates for curative surgery, detect unsuspected metastatic spread, and identify patients who might benefit from certain types of medical therapy. Although it was initially speculated that 18FDG-PET imaging would not be sensitive for tumor detection in patients who have neuroendocrine tumors because of the usual slow metabolism and biology of these tumors, many neuroen...Continue Reading
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