Improved Clinical Staging of Esophageal Cancer with FDG-PET / 대한핵의학회잡지

ABSTRACT

PURPOSE: Since preoperative staging in esophageal cancer is important in both therapy and prognosis, there had been many efforts to improve its accuracy. Recent studies indicate that whole body FDG-PET has high sensitivity in detection of metastasis in esophageal cancer. Therefore, we added FDG-PET to other conventional methods in staging esophageal cancer to evaluate the usefulness of this method. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Subjects were 142 esophageal cancer patients (average 62.3 +/- 8.3 yrs) who received CT and PET just before operation. First, we compared N stage and M stage of the CT or PET with those of the post-operative results. Then we compared the stage according to the EUS (T stage) and CT (N and M stage) or EUS (T stage) and CT and PET (N and M stage) to that according to the post-operative results. RESULTS: Among 142 patients, surgical staging of 69 were N0 and 73 were N1. In M staging, 128 were M0 and 14 were M1. Sensitivity, specificity, and accuracy of N staging were 35.6%, 89.9%, 62.0% with CT and 58.9%, 71.0%, 64.7% with PET, respectively. In M staging, 14.3%, 96.9%, 88.7% with CT and 50.0%, 94.5%, 90.1% with PET, respectively. The concordances of [EUS+CT] and [EUS+CT+PET] with post-operative results were 41.2% and 54.6%, respectively and there was significant improvement of staging with additional PET scan (p< 0.005). CONCLUSION: The concordance of [EUS+CT+PET] with post-operative result was significantly increased compared to that of [EUS+CT]. Thus, the addition of FDG-PET with other conventional methods may enable more accurate preoperative staging.