Abdominal staging of thoracic Hodgkin disease: CT-lymphangiography-Ga-67 scanning correlation

A retrospective study was performed to assess whether lymphangiography and gallium-67 scanning were complementary to computed tomography (CT) in abdominal staging of disease in 94 patients with early-stage thoracic Hodgkin disease. In 51 patients with surgical or follow-up correlation, the spleen was involved in 16% (n = 8), the spleen and lymph nodes in 22% (n = 11), and only lymph nodes in 2% (n = 1). In these 51 patients, none of the imaging modalities had greater than 50% sensitivity for the detection of nodal involvement. The overall accuracy was similar (71%-82%) for each modality. Analysis of subgroups of patients with lymph nodes measuring less than 10 mm, 10-19 mm, or 20 mm or greater at CT revealed that lymphangiography and gallium scanning added little to the positive or negative predictive values of CT. The sensitivity of CT for detection of splenic disease was 11% (two of 19). On the basis of surgical or follow-up correlation in 51 patients, the authors conclude that lymphangiography and gallium scanning offer minimal or no complementary benefit.