Value of dual-phase 2-fluoro-2-deoxy-d-glucose positron emission tomography in cervical cancer

The role of positron emission tomography (PET) with fluorine-18-labeled fluoro-2-deoxy-d-glucose (FDG) in cervical cancer has not yet been well defined. We conducted a prospective study to investigate its efficacy in comparison with magnetic resonance imaging and/or computed tomography (MRI-CT).

Patients with untreated locally advanced (35%) or recurrent (65%) cervical cancer were enrolled onto this study. In the first part of this study, 41 patients had a conventional FDG-PET (40 minutes after injection), and in the second part, 94 patients received dual-phase PET (at both 40 minutes and 3 hours after injection). The overall results of PET scans were compared with MRI-CT, and the two protocols of PET were also compared with each other. Lesion status was determined by pathology results or clinical follow-up. The receiver operating characteristic curve method with area under the curve (AUC) calculation was used to evaluate the discriminative power.

Overall (N = 135), FDG-PET was significantly superior to MRI-CT in identifying metastatic lesions (AUC, 0.971 v 0.879; P =.039), although the diagnostic accuracy was similar for local tumors. Dual-phase PET was also significantly better than the 40-minute PET (n = 94). The latter accurately recognized 70% of metastatic lesions and the former detected 90% (AUC, 0.943 v 0.951; P =.007). Dual-phase FDG-PET changed treatment of 29 patients (31%; upstaging 27% and downstaging 4%).

This study shows that dual-phase FDG-PET is superior to conventional FDG-PET or MRI-CT in the evaluation of metastatic lesions in locally advanced or recurrent cervical cancer.