Positron Emission Tomography (PET)-Computed Tomography (CT) for Preoperative Staging of Colorectal Cancers. |
Yoo, Joong Jae , Lee, Seung Hyun , Ahn, Byung Kwon , Baek, Sung Uhn , Lee, Seok Mo |
1Department of Surgery, Kosin University College of Medicine, Busan, Korea. gscrslsh@hanmail.net 2Department of Nuclear Medinice, Kosin University College of Medicine, Busan, Korea. |
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Abstract |
PURPOSE The purpose of this study is to evaluate the usefulness of positron emission tomography (PET)-computed tomography (CT) for preoperative tumor staging in cases of colorectal cancer. METHODS Between July 2006 and September 2007, seventy-six patients with a diagnosis of colorectal cancer (43 males and 33 females; mean age: 60.4+/-10.13 years; range: 34~82 years) selected prospectively were studied for staging by using Chest X-ray, abdominal CT and PET-CT. RESULTS The sensitivities and the specificities for N-staging were 76.9% and 35.1% for CT, 61.8% and 66.7% for PET-CT, and both procedures showed a relatively low diagnostic accuracy (CT 57.9%, PET-CT 61.8%). In the PET-CT alone, six distant metastatic lesions and four multiple primary malignancies were found. The locations of the distant metastases were the liver, the axillary node, the common iliac node, the subclavicular node, the peritoneum, and the lung. The locations of the multiple primary maligancies in extracolonic sites were 3 in the thyroid and 1 in the nasopharynx. CONCLUSIONS For N-staging, preoperative PET-CT is no more useful than CT, but PET-CT is required before surgery to find lesions that cannot be found with conventional studies. |
Key Words:
Positron emission tomography; Colorectal cancer; Staging |
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