FDG PET scan strategies and long-term outcomes after first-line therapy in Hodgkin's Disease

Interim FDG-PET in Hodgkin lymphoma: a compass for a safe navigation in clinical trials?

“…74 There is no ideal gold standard to test the validity of interim PET scan results. As previously alluded, not only does the tissue biopsy have significant limitations, 75 but also histologic confirmation could not be advocated as a reference test for interim-PET scan because the latter was proposed as a surrogate of tumor chemosensitivity and not to assess an early complete response to chemotherapy. In an attempt to validate the proposed Deauville 5-point scoring (5PS) system, the retrospective international validation study (IVS) was undertaken to test the interim-PET results with a primary end point of 3-year failure-free survival.…”

Negative predictive value of F-18-FDG coincidence PET in patients with Hodgkin's disease and a residual mass after therapy: a retrospective diagnostic test study

“…23,24 The body of evidence about false positive post treatment PET in patients with HD is constantly growing, [12][13][14]18 and to gain accurate data FDG-avid lesions must be checked by biopsy, specially in previously unaffected region. 3,4,10,[12][13][14]18,23,25 Noninvasive alternative is to wait and repeat PET imaging in one or two months. 24 This study has several limitations including a retrospective design, relatively small sample size reflecting the low incidence of HD and aggregation of patients with varying disease stages and treatment regimens.…”

“…4,[10][11][12] The same is not true for positive FDG-PET findings and generally, in such cases a biopsy is recommended for the confirmation of presence of the active disease. [11][12][13][14] It is well known that coincidence gamma cameras have inferior sensitivity for the tumour detection in comparison to dedicated PET scanners. 15,16 Therefore, some authors expressed doubts about the value of coincidence FDG-PET scanning for the response assessment in patients with lymphoma.…”