Severina Šedienė 1, Ilona Kulakienė 1, Viktoras Rudžianskas 2
1Lithuanian University of Health Sciences, Medical Academy
2Lithuanian University of Health Sciences, Oncology Institute
Abstract
The role of 18F-fluorodeoxy-D-glucose positron emission tomography-computed tomography (18F-FDG PET/CT) imaging in head and neck carcinoma (HNC) during pre-treatment staging, treatment response assessment after induction chemotherapy, radiotherapy planning and after entire therapy, follow-up is analyzed with attention on contemporary evidence. The 18F-FDG PET/CT is properly established in staging for distinction of cervical nodal involvement or rejection of distant metastases. Recently, many papers on the assessment of treatment response of 18F-FDG PET/CT have been published. 18F-FDG PET/CT performed in 2 weeks after the completion of induction chemotherapy (ICT) prevents from irrelevant invasive procedures, such as full neck dissection, with a significant impact on clinical outcome. 18F-FDG PET/CT completed in 8 weeks after the radio-chemotherapy treatment also has a high negative predictive value. From another point of view, the low positive predictive value due to feasible post-ICT and radiation therapy inflammation findings needs adequate attention to make a clinical decision. Recently, 18F-FDG PET/CT imaging in head and neck carcinoma has emerged, especially in radiotherapy planning for tumour volume delineation. In the near future, there are some expectations that new PET radiopharmaceuticals would present significant information on specific tumour characteristics, and all possible limitations of 18F-FDG may be avoided.
Keywords: 18F-FDG, PET/CT, Head and neck cancer