ABSTRACT
Objective To evaluate the clinical value of 18FDG PET/CT in the diagnosis of lymph node metastasis and evaluation of node staging for esophageal carcinoma. Methods A prospective study was performed to access whether 18F FDG PET/CT can improve the diagnostic accuracy in lymph node metastasis for patients with esophageal carcinoma, 30 patients underwent esophagectomy with extensive dissection of lymph nodes. PET/CT findings were compared with that of CT. Results The pathological examination confirmed metastasis in 22 patients and 49 out of 243 excised lymph nodes. In PET/CT analysis, the sensitivity in the detection of lymph node metastasis was 93.9%, specificity was 91.2%, with a diagnostic accuracy of 91.8%. The positive and negative predictive value was 73.0% and 98.3%, respectively. CT resulted in a sensitivity of 40.8%, specificity of 96.9%, accuracy of 85.6%, the PPV was 76.9% and NPV 86.6%, respectively. The difference of sensitivity (P