PET Excels at Reflecting Breast Cancer Prognosis.

TORONTO -- Whole-body [blank.sup.18]fluorodeoxyglucose-PET scans were superior to conventional imaging techniques for predicting the posttrearment outcomes of women at high risk for recurrent breast cancer, Dr. Duska Vranjesevic said at the annual meeting of the Society for Nuclear Medicine.

Conventional staging and [blank.sup.18]fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG)-PET were compared in 61 patients, median age 54 years, who were followed for a minimum of 6 months after completing chemotherapy, radiation, and/or surgery. Many studies in the literature support the accuracy of FDG-PET for staging and restaging breast cancer, but "the value of FDGPET for evaluating clinical outcome in restaged patients has not been studied extensively," noted Dr. Vranjesevic of the nuclear medicine services at the University of California Los Angeles Medical Center, where the study was conducted.

Of the 61 patients, 42 were undergoing FDG-PET to evaluate residual or recurrent disease. Infiltrating ductal carcinoma was present in 45 patients. A total of 189 conventional imagingprocedures, or 3.2 per patient, were performed in the 3 months before the women underwent whole body FDG-PET ...