The Diagnostic Accuracy of ¹⁸ F-FGD-PET/CT for Cancer of the Gallbladder: A Retrospective Study

Background  Gallbladder cancer has a poor prognosis and imaging can have variable diagnostic accuracy. We assessed the ability of preoperative ¹⁸ F-fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography computed tomography ( ¹⁸ F-FDG-PET/CT) imaging to predict a postoperative histological diagnosis of gallbladder cancer. Method  A retrospective analysis was undertaken in a cohort of patients, who had suspected gallbladder cancer on cross-sectional imaging and that underwent preoperative FDG-PET/CT scan. The discriminatory power of FDG-PET/CT was determined in receiver operator characteristic (ROC) analysis and diagnostic accuracy parameters were estimated at different thresholds of maximum standard unit value (SUV _max ) _. Results  Twenty-two patients were included in the study; 7 had malignant and 15 benign diagnoses. There was no statistically significant difference between the measured SUV _max between the two groups ( p  = 0.71). With an area under the curve of 0.486, the ROC curve did not indicate any discriminatory power of FDG-PET/CT at any potential threshold of SUV _max. Conclusion  This study indicates that the diagnosis of primary gallbladder cancer cannot be accurately confirmed with FDG PET/CT scanning.