Spontaneous remission of metastases of cancer of the uterine cervix.

BACKGROUND: Spontaneous remission (SR) is the complete or incomplete disappearance of a disease or cancer despite no or inadequate treatment. SR is a rare event, and only 5 cases of SR of carcinoma of the uterine cervix have been reported so far. CASE REPORT: We report the case of a young woman suffering from carcinoma of the uterine cervix metastasized to the lung, pleura, bone, skin and brain. The primary tumor was removed. After diagnosis of the histologically proven metastases, further palliative treatment was inadequate, except for radiotherapy to the brain. In all other metastases, spontaneous remission occurred. 8 years after the initial diagnosis of metastasis, there is no evidence of active disease. CONCLUSION: SR is a rare but evident phenomenon. Individual features of malignant tumors should be taken into account much more when determining the best treatment for the patient.

Positron emission tomography for the staging of Hodgkin's lymphoma--increasing the body of evidence in favor of the method.

The staging of Hodgkin's lymphoma (HL) is crucial for an optimal therapy, and fluorine-18-deoxyglucose-positron emission tomography (FDG-PET) is increasingly used in this regard. However, there is still a scarcity of available data on the staging of HL. Twenty-eight consecutive patients with newly diagnosed HL were included in this study. PET results were compared with conventional staging, including clinical workup, computerized tomography (CT) and sonography. Evaluation was focused on the description of involved lymph node (LN) regions or organs rather than on a lesion-by-lesion analysis. In supradiaphragmal LN, the results of PET and CT scans were positive in 26% and negative in 68% of cases. Furthermore, PET was positive in 5% (CT negative), and CT showed enlarged LN in 1% of cases (PET negative). In infradiaphragmal LN, PET/CT results were positive in 10% and negative in 88% of cases. In 2% of cases, PET showed additional foci, while in 1% the CT was positive. PET changed the staging in 21% of cases (4 up-stagings, 2 down-stagings) and this was confirmed during follow-up. PET should therefore be routinely used for staging HL until larger clinical studies can demonstrate patients who may not require this additional investigation or those patients who are reliably staged on the basis of PET alone.