Modern cancer care is critically dependent on imaging technologies, which are used to detect early tumors and guide their therapy or surgery. Molecular imaging technologies provide information about the functional or metabolic characteristics of malignancies, tumor stage and therapeutical response, and tumor recurrence; whereas conventional imaging technologies predominantly assess the tumor's anatomical or morphologic features including its size, density, shape, etc.
The research team led by Dr. Sun used PET/CT, which is based on information about the functional or metabolic characteristics of malignancies, to study the early recurrence in gastric cancer patients with suspected recurrence and in asymptomatic patients with gastric cancer. This will be published on Augest 7, 2008 in the World Journal of Gastroenterology address this question.
PET/CT was positive in 14 patients and negative in 9 patients. When correlated with final diagnosis, which was confirmed by histopathologic evidence of tumor recurrence in 8 of the 23 patients and by clinical follow-up in 15. Overall, the accuracy of PET/CT was 82.6%, negative predictive value was 77.7%, and positive predictive value was 85.7%. Especially, PET/CT revealed true-positive findings in 47.8% patients who had negative or no definite findings by computed tomography. PET/CT demonstrated extra-abdomen metastasis in 7 patients and additional esophageal carcinoma in one patient. Clinical decisions of treatment were changed in 30.4% patients after introducing PET/CT into their conventional post-operative follow-up program.
These results demonstrate a new view of molecular imaging technology in gastric cancer, and thus may provide new application for further improving of the long term survival of patients who are suffering from gastric cancer.