Whole-body F-18 FDG PET for hepatocellular carcinoma patients after interventional treatment

For hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) patients after primary treatment, conventional anatomical imagings may not be reliable in detecting residual, recurrent or metastatic lesions. The aim of this retrospective study was to evaluate the usability of FDG PET in the follow-up of HCC patients after prior interventional treatments. The database consisted of 10 male and 2 female (age range, 46-82 years; mean age, 63.4 +/- 11.7 years) who had received primary HCC treatments and underwent FDG PET scans at the National Taiwan University Hospital. The accuracy of FDG PET detection was determined by the histopathological results or other clinical evidences afterwards. Of the 22 lesions, FDG PET studies were able to detect 8 (8/10, 80%) intrahepatic lesions and 8 (8/12, 66.7%) extrahepatic lesions. The lesion based detection rate of FDG PET is 72.7% (16/22). FDG PET was able to detect at least 1 lesion in 11 patients. The 6 false negative lesions in 6 patients include 2 intrahepatic lesions, 1 brain lesion, 1 sphenoid sinus lesion and 2 multiple subcentimeter pulmonary lesions. FDG PET scan is able to provide valuable auxiliary information for the follow up of HCC patients clinically suspicious of recurrence if their conventional image findings are not unambiguous.