Abstract
PURPOSE:
Knowing
the glycolytic phenotype of cancers is important for the appropriate
use of F-18 FDG PET/CT imaging. This study was performed to determine
the influence of tumor grade and histology on the glycolytic phenotype
of epithelial ovarian cancer patients.
MATERIALS AND METHODS:
Only
histopathologically confirmed epithelial ovarian cancer patients, with
no other concurrent malignancies, who had F-18 FDG PET/CT either before
or at least 3 months after any therapeutic intervention and had
confirmed measurable disease of >1 cm were included. The F-18 FDG
PET/CT uptake was determined as maximum standard uptake value (SUVmax)
at the pathologically confirmed site of disease or in the most active
lesion. SUVmax was correlated to tumor grade and histology.
RESULTS:
Of
171 ovarian cancer patients, 42 referred for F-18 FDG PET/CT scans
between January 2003 and December 2010 were eligible for inclusion.
Histologic diagnosis most frequently revealed the serous subtype (n =
32) and grade III (n = 28) epithelial ovarian cancer. Overall, ovarian
carcinomas exhibited a strong glycolytic phenotype (average SUVmax, 7.6
g/mL). The SUVmax averaged 7.76 g/mL, 6.76 g/mL, and 7.95 g/mL for Grade
I, II, and III, respectively. There was no statistically significant
correlation between tumor SUVmax and the histologic tumor grade (P =
0.74). No statistically significant differences were found between the
tumor SUVmax of serous and endometrioid subtypes (P = 0.53). For other
histology subtypes, no statistic evaluation was possible due to the low
number of cases.
CONCLUSIONS:
The glycolytic phenotype in
epithelial ovarian cancer, expressed as SUVmax, is strong. However,
tumor FDG uptake is unrelated to tumor grade and histologic subtype
implying that F-18 FDG PET/CT cannot be used to predict tumor
aggressiveness or histology.
