ABSTRACT
INTRODUCTION: 67Ga scintigraphy is an established method for the staging and follow-up of patients diagnosed of lymphomas. The aim of this study is to evaluate advantages of 67Ga SPECT-CT study over planar, SPECT and high resolution CT studies in lymphoma disease. MATERIAL AND METHODS: One hundred and one 67Ga studies corresponding to 74 patients (46 men) were obtained, mean age 44 years. Thirty-eight patients (51 %) were diagnosed of Hodgkin's lymphoma and 36 were non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. All patients were evaluated with 67Ga and high-resolution CT studies. 67Ga studies were performed in a hybrid system, obtaining planar, SPECT and fused SPECT-CT imaging. Findings obtained from 67Ga studies were correlated with findings obtained from CT studies, both much in number of tumoral lesions and in their localization. RESULTS: Planar, SPECT, SPECT-CT and CT studies detected 123, 146, 155 and 132 lesions respectively. SPECT-CT and CT were concordant in 52 studies, while there was no concordance between SPECT-CT and CT in the remaining 49 studies, SPECT-CT detecting more lesions than CT in 28 of them. These findings changed the disease stage 18 times (18 % of whole studies). CONCLUSION: These results show better efficiency of 67Ga SPECT-CT compared to the other acquisition methods of 67Ga study and to CT for detection of tumoral lymphomatous lesions. 67Ga SPECT-CT study improves the diagnostic yield of the study with 67Ga in patients with lymphoma, providing better anatomical localization of tumoral lesions and detection of extraganglionar disease.
