Whole body PET for the evaluation of bony metastases in patients with breast cancer: comparison with 99Tcm-MDP bone scintigraphy

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to determine the potential role of positron emission tomography (PET) using 2-[18F]-fluoro-2-deoxy-D-glucose (FDG) for the evaluation of bony metastasis compared with 99Tcm-methylene diphosphonate (99Tcm-MDP) bone scintigraphy in patients with breast cancer. Fifty-one female patients with breast cancer who had PET together with a bone scan within 1 month between September 1994 and March 1997 were included in this study. The median age was 49 years (range 29-79 years). The sensitivity, specificity and accuracy of the bone scan were 77.7%, 80.9% and 80.3%, respectively. On the other hand, for the detection of bone metastases PET had a sensitivity, specificity and accuracy of 77.7%, 97.6% and 94.1%, respectively. In the diagnosis of bony metastasis derived from breast cancer, FDG-PET was statistically superior to bone scintigraphy in its specificity. In conclusion, FDG-PET appears to be a powerful tool not only in the diagnosis of the primary lesion and soft tissue metastasis, but also in the diagnosis of bony metastasis among patients with breast cancer.

FDG-PET/CT Compared with Conventional Imaging in the Detection of Distant Metastases of Primary Breast Cancer

“…Previous studies have shown that PET or PET/CT may be superior to SS for the detection of bone metastases [22][23][24][25][26][27][28]. Our results indicated that PET/CT was superior to SS in the detection of bone metastases.…”

0029 The effects of preoperative 18F-FDG-PET/CT in breast cancer patients in comparison with conventional imaging study

“…Many studies have found that 18 F-FDG PET/CT is more efficient than bone scintigraphy in detecting lytic and mixed bone metastases and bone marrow involvement, but it sometimes lacks sensitivity to sclerotic bone metastasis, and a multimodality approach is suggested [18,23]. In our study, five metastatic bone lesions were detected by 18 F-FDG PET/CT and the bone scan.…”

Imaging Bone Metastases in Breast Cancer: Staging and Response Assessment

“…For detection of skeletal metastases and staging of cancer, 18 F-FDG PET or PET/CT has shown higher sensitivity or specificity than BS in most reported studies (58,59) and metaanalyses (14,16,60). The improvement in sensitivity over that of BS may be due to the ability to detect metastatic tumor cells in the bone marrow before there is a sufficient osteoblastic effect to allow detection by bone-specific tracers.…”