Measurement of tumor volume by PET to evaluate prognosis in patients with head and neck cancer treated by chemo-radiation therapy

Prognostic Value of Metabolic Tumor Volume Measured by 18F-FDG PET/CT in Locally Advanced Head and Neck Squamous Cell Carcinomas Treated by Surgery

“…Allal et al [7] and Roh et al [8] found that high FDG uptake correlated with advanced pT and pN stages. However, in several studies, the SUV max of primary tumor or all lesions, including regional metastatic lymph nodes, was not confirmed as a significant factor predicting clinical outcome in the patients with HNSCC undergoing radiation therapy with or without chemotherapy [11][12][13][26][27][28]. In our results, the lower The pT stage is defined as the extent of primary tumor in terms of size and invasion into the adjacent structure.…”

“…MTV can be readily measured semiautomatically with a dedicated software algorithm. In previous studies, GTV measured from CT was found to correlate well with MTV from PET scans in HNSCC cases [11,12]. The MTV of malignant tumor reflects not only the tumor burden but also the functional and biologic status of the tumor due to the biologic features of FDG, and MTV can be expected to be a significant novel quantitative biomarker in the management of HNSCC.…”

“…Because of the good correlation between the MTV and the GTV assessed by other imaging tools such as CT [11,12], we can expected that MTV may be another important factor to be considered in the management of HNSCC. A study to compare CT, MRI, and FDG PET for delineation of tumor volume in pharyngolaryngeal squamous cell carcinoma with the results validated by surgical specimen indicated that FDG PET was the most accurate modality for measuring tumor volume [36].…”

“…Furthermore, an increase in MTV of 17.4 ml was significantly associated with an increased hazard of recurrence or death. Seol et al [11] demonstrated that an MTV of 9.3 cm 3 or higher was significantly associated with an increased risk of recurrence (2.19-fold, p=0.0006) and death (1.62-fold, p=0.051) in 59 patients with HNSCC treated with chemoradiation therapy. Our study differs from these previous studies in that all 56 patients included in this study received surgical resection of primary tumor with lymph node dissection.…”

“…The MTV of malignant tumor reflects not only the tumor burden but also the functional and biologic status of the tumor due to the biologic features of FDG, and MTV can be expected to be a significant novel quantitative biomarker in the management of HNSCC. The value of MTV was already identified in studies performed in patients with HNSCC who received radiotherapy (RT) with or without chemotherapy [11][12][13]. To our knowledge, there has been no report on MTV as a factor predicting the clinical outcome in HNSCC cases with treatment based on surgery.…”