Background: The aim of this paper was to review the diagnostic contributions of 18FDG-PET/CT to the restaging of renal cell carcinoma (RCC) retrospectively.
Methods: The current study included 132 patients, who were operated on between July 2007 and April 2013, for renal cell carcinoma (RCC) and received 18FDG-PET/CT scans for restaging purposes. Ninety (68.2%) of the patients were male and 42 (31.8%) were female, with a mean age of 60.7 years and standard deviation ±11.9 (range min: 28, max: 86). The patients were required to fast for 6 hours prior to scanning, and whole-body PET scanning from the skull base to the upper thighs was performed approximately 1 hour after the intravenous injection of 555 MBq of F-18 FDG. Whole body CT scanning was performed in the cranio-caudal direction. FDG-PET images were reconstructed using CT data for attenuation correction. Suspicious recurrent or metastatic lesions were confirmed by histopathology or clinical follow-up.
Results: Sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, negative predictive value, and accuracy of 18FDG-PET/CT were 93.8%, 88.2%, 92.6%, 88.2%, and 91.6%, respectively.
Conclusions: 18FDG-PET/CT can detect local and distant metastases with high precision in the restaging of RCC. It can play an important role in the postoperative decision-making for treatment choices, in following treatment response, and can affect decision-making.