Comparison of Gadolinium-enhanced MRI and 18FDG PET/PET-CT for the diagnosis of brain metastases in lung cancer patients: A meta-analysis of 5 prospective studies

Abstract

ObjectiveWe undertook this meta-analysis to compare the significance of Gadolinium-enhanced MRI and 18FDG PET/PET-CT for diagnosing brain metastases of lung cancer patients.ResultsFive articles comprising 941 patients were included for analysis. The sensitivities with 95% confidence interval for PET/PET-CT and MRI were 0.21 (0.13 − 0.32) and 0.77 (95% CI = 0.60 − 0.89), specificities were 1.00 (0.99 − 1.00) and 0.99 (0.97 − 1.00), and the areas under curve were 0.98 (0.96 − 0.89) and 0.97 (0.96 − 0.98).Materials and MethodsA computerized literature search of studies was conducted in the Pubmed and Embase databases. Meta-analysis methods were used to calculate the sensitivities, specificities, likelihood ratios ratios, diagnostic odd ratios, and areas under summary receiver operating characteristic curves for PET/PET-CT and MRI, respectively.ConclusionsThe analysis suggested Gadolinium-enhanced MRI had higher sensitivity than 18FDG PET/PET-CT for the diagnosis of brain metastases in lung cancer. MRI may provide additional information to PET-CT for diagnosing brain metastatic lesions.

Diagnostic Performance and Prognostic Value of PET/CT with Different Tracers for Brain Tumors: A Systematic Review of Published Meta-Analyses

“…Twenty-four meta-analyses on the use of PET or PET/CT with different tracers in brain tumors, published from 2012, were selected through the comprehensive computer literature search (Figure 1) [8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23,24,25,26,27,28,29,30,31]. The characteristics of the selected meta-analyses on the diagnostic performance are presented in Table 1.…”

“…A meta-analysis demonstrated that the pooled sensitivity and specificity of 18 F-FDG PET or PET/CT in detecting brain metastases in patients with lung cancer were 21% and 100%, respectively. In particular, the sensitivity of this method is lower compared to that of contrast-enhanced MRI [24].…”

Role of Gd2O3‑doped carbon‑11‑choline‑lenvatinib nanoparticles contrast agent PET/CT in the diagnosis of patients with lung cancer

“…An early diagnosis of lung cancer may improve the administration of timely anticancer treatments, including surgery, chemoradiotherapy and immunotherapy, for patients with lung cancer, which can further improve the overall survival and progression-free survival (33)(34)(35). Clinically, PET/CT has been widely used for diagnosing human lung cancer and evaluating metastatic lesions (36). Previous studies have indicated that contrast agent is useful in PET/CT scanning of human lung cancer (37)(38)(39).…”

Evidence-Based PET for Brain Tumours

“…A meta-analysis demonstrated that the pooled sensitivity and specificity of 18 F-FDG PET or PET/CT in detecting brain metastases in patients with lung cancer were 21% and 100%, respectively. In particular, the sensitivity of this method is lower compared to that of contrast-enhanced MRI [19].…”