Nuclear medicine and radiotherapy in the clinical management of glioblastoma patients

Abstract

Introduction The aim of the narrative review was to analyse the applications of nuclear medicine (NM) techniques such as PET/CT with different tracers in combination with radiotherapy for the clinical management of glioblastoma patients. Materials and methods Key references were derived from a PubMed query. Hand searching and clinicaltrials.gov were also used. Results This paper contains a narrative report and a critical discussion of NM approaches in combination with radiotherapy in glioma patients. Conclusions NM can provide the Radiation Oncologist several aids that can be useful in the clinical management of glioblastoma patients. At the same, these results need to be validated in prospective and multicenter trials.

Advanced neuroimaging studies: a patient-centered revolution

“…The present issue of Clinical and Translational Imaging focuses on the clinical implications and the changes in daily practice occurring as a result of the growing use of advanced neuroimaging modalities. As finely depicted by the articles of this issue, all the steps of patient care are being transformed by the availability of advanced neuroimaging, including (1) prognostic assessment [1], (2) multidisciplinary discussion [2], (3) planning and performing surgery [3][4][5], (4) response assessment after cytotoxic or targeted treatments [6][7][8], and (5) the identification of new therapeutic strategies [9] (Fig. 1).…”

“…A challenging issue for clinicians is the assessment of tumor response after radiation due to overlapping tumor progression and treatment-related changes. As reviewed in the present issue, MRS, PWI, and PET might assist in the differential diagnosis between pseudo-progression and true progression [6,7], providing relevant data for informed treatment decisions. In this context, the contribution of amino acid PET might be of high value [12,13], strengthening evidence for a change in treatment when the results of advanced MRI techniques are not conclusive.…”

“…In this context, the contribution of amino acid PET might be of high value [12,13], strengthening evidence for a change in treatment when the results of advanced MRI techniques are not conclusive. Amino acid PET might also help to formulate survival estimates [7,8], further expanding the range of applications of PET studies in neuro-oncology.…”