Clinical evaluation of FDG-PET and FDG-PET/CT for the patients with recurrent or metastatic breast cancer

Recently, fluorodeoxyglucose-positron emission tomography (FDG-PET) and FDG-PET/CT has become widely accepted as the functional diagnosis technique of malignant tumors. We have evaluated the accuracy of FDG-PET and FDG-PET/CT for detecting the tumor foci in the patients with suspected recurrent or metastatic lesions of breast carcinoma. FDG-PET and FDG-PET/CT examination was applied on 53 patients of breast carcinoma with a clinical suspicion of disease recurrence. There were 118 sites of the malignant lesions in the 53 patients. FDG-PET and FDG-PET/CT detected 106 sites indicating recurrent or metastatic lesions. The sensitivity, specificity and accuracy of FDG-PET and FDG-PET/CT were 89.3%, 100.0%, 97.5% respectively. False-positive lesion were not detected, but False-negative lesions were found in the bone (n=1), liver (n=3), lung (n=3), pleura (n=2), brain (n=3) pericardium (n=1), and in the peritoneum (n=2). FDG-PET and FDG-PET/CT is a useful diagnostic technique for detecting recurrent or metastatic lesions of breast carcinoma. However, we still recommend that FDG-PET and FDG-PET/CT should be combined with the conventional staging procedure to obtain more accurate diagnosis for the breast cancer. (author)