Evaluation of ¹⁸F-FDG PET/CT in early-stage cervical carcinoma

The purpose is to evaluate ¹⁸F-fluorodeoxy glucose-positron emission tomography (PET)/computed tomography (CT) for the detection of cervical carcinoma of the International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics stages Ib and IIa.

Twenty-two patients with cervical carcinoma were included in this study. Eleven of them were at the International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics stage Ib, and the remaining patients were at stage IIa. All the patients underwent ¹⁸F-fluorodeoxy glucose-PET/CT scan, and in 15 patients, additional delayed imaging of pelvis was performed. The PET/CT findings were compared with histopathologic and follow-up results.

Of the 22 patients, 20 had cervical cancer with abnormal uptake that were detected directly using PET/CT without additional information from delayed imaging of pelvis; the other 2 patients showed lesions with no abnormal uptake. The use of delayed imaging of the pelvis with PET/CT corrected 1 false-negative case. Thus, the accuracy of PET/CT for early-stage cervical carcinoma was 95.45% (21/22). The uptake of early-stage cervical carcinoma showed no statistical significance between the group of stage Ib and the group of stage IIa (P > 0.05). The false-negative rate and negative predictive value of PET/CT imaging in predicting pelvic nodal involvement were 6.25% (1/16) and 93.75%, respectively.

PET/CT showed a high accuracy for the diagnosis of early-stage cervical cancer and a high-negative predictive value for predicting the pelvic nodal status in early-stage cervical cancer.