Response of skeletal metastases to systemic chemotherapy in patients with breast cancer

This prospective study was performed to evaluate the effect of systemic chemotherapy on skeletal metastases in breast cancer patients. Serum CA15-3 concentration was determined in 86 metastatic breast cancer patients in bone and correlated to whole skeletal scintigraphy. Fifteen patients with a normal level of CA15-3 [<28 u/ml] were excluded from the study. Also, a control group of 50 breast cancer patients after radical mastectomy with no evidence of local or metastatic deposits were also subjected to bone scintigraphy and serum CA15-3 concentration. Metastatic patients were classified into five groups according to the findings of bone scan from M0 [normal bone scan] to M4 [superscan]. This study suggested that CA15-3 could be a complementary marker in evaluating patients with metastatic breast cancer to bone before and shortly after initiating chemotherapy. It has the advantage of differentiating between disease progression and flare reaction

Technetium - 99 m sestamibi uptake in differentiation between viable and non - viable soft tissue tumours

The role of technetium-99m sestamibi [Tc-99m-MIBI] for evaluating various benign and malignant soft tissue pathologies and for the assessment of effectiveness of therapy was investigated in a prospective study. Technetium-99m MIBI was examined in 48 patients with soft tissue lesions [36 malignant, 12 benign]. Thirty-three malignant lesions were found to concentrate radiotracer and the mean lesion to non-lesion [L/N] uptake ratio was significantly higher than that of benign lesions. Nineteen patients with malignant soft tissue sarcomas received treatment in the form of wide surgical excision and postoperative chemotherapy and/or radiotherapy. A significant post treatment decrease of Tc-99m MIBI uptake with mean L/N value in patients with complete response confirmed by the histopathologic examination, whereas, the uptake ratio was increased in four out of six cases with local recurrence. Thus, quantitative Tc-99m-MIBI has a significantly good indicator for the detection of malignant soft tissue lesions as well as for assessing the treatment response and emphasis of local recurrence