[The role of PET/CT in decision-making during cancer treatment. Clinical experience]

Nowadays PET/CT examinations have got more and more important role during cancer treatment. It has importance not only in diagnostic examination and staging but also in the radiation planning process and measuring the therapeutic effect. From November 2006 to November 2010 there were 153 PET/CT examinations requested by the Oncology Outpatient Clinic, Uzsoki Hospital. Nine patients were excluded from the examination. In the clinical trial we have aimed to measure what the correlation between the oncologists' questions and the PET/CT results was, in how many cases the PET/CT had influence on therapeutic decision-making. In the case of the patients waiting for the operation we compared the results of the pathological examinations to the results of the PET/CT. The oncologists got the expected answers in 79 cases, while in 45 cases the answers were negative. In 10 cases there were no definite answers. Ten cases proved to be false negative or false positive based on the later pathological examination. As a result of the PET/CT findings the originally planned therapeutic decisions or the therapies in process have been modified in 77 cases. To sum up, the PET/CT gave the expected answers to the oncologists' questions in more than half of the cases (54.9%) and modified the originally prescribed therapy in 53.5% of the cases.