Diagnosis of intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma with positron emission tomography

Diagnosis of intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma (IC) by positron emission tomography (PET) has been scarcely reported and this paper reviews authors' experience of PET diagnosis of IC with [18F]deoxy-glucose (FDG). Subjects are 20 cases with IC who received FDG-PET diagnosis for evaluating the disease progression and 16 cases with suspicious recurrent IC. PET was done with Advance NXi machine (GE Medical System) 60 min after intravenous 200-250 MBq of FDG. Compared were images by PET and CT. For the IC, diagnostic sensitivities by CT and PET were found to be 95-100% and for metastatic lymph nodes, the sensitivity, specificity and overall accuracy of PET were 38, 100 and 74%, respectively, whereas those of CT, 75, 73 and 74%. For recurrence, those of PET were 77, 67 and 75%. In conclusion, PET images have a compensatory role for CT images, especially for lymphatic metastasis with higher specificity and for recurrence with higher overall accuracy. (R.T.)