Utility of fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography/computed tomography in patients with fever of unknown origin diagnosed as lymphoma

ABSTRACT

To assess the efficacy of fluorine-18 fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography [[18]F-FDG PET]/computed tomography [CT] in the diagnosis of patients with fever of unknown origin [FUO], who were finally diagnosed as lymphoma. A retrospective study was performed in the First Affiliated Hospital, School of Medicine of Zhejiang University, China, from March 2009 to March 2012. The PET/CT images of consecutive patients with FUO were analyzed. Within 1 week of PET/CT scanning, additional histological tests were also performed if clinically needed. A total of 73 consecutive patients were included. Of these, 34 [47%] had a PET/CT finding suggestive of the presence of lymphoma and 29 [85%] had a diagnosis of confirmed lymphoma; 39 [53%] had a PET/CT result revealing the absence of lymphoma and 4 [10%] were diagnosed by biopsy as having lymphoma. The most frequent lymphoma diagnosis was peripheral T cell lymphoma [n = 16; 55%], followed by diffuse large B cell lymphoma [n = 9; 31%]. The accuracy of PET/CT was 88%. In this study, PET/CT had high diagnostic accuracy in patients with FUO resulting from lymphoma, which indicated that PET/CT scanning was a valuable diagnostic tool for these groups of patients with FUO