Background: Because of the expected high performances of scintigraphic scans with [18F]-fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG) not only in diagnostics and but also in therapeutic impact, especially in thoracic oncology, there are a lot of French nuclear medicine departments which will soon be equipped with a positron emission tomograph (PET).
Material and methods: The Nuclear Medicine Department of the Hôpital d'Instructions des Armées du Val-de-Grâce, Paris, led a retrospective study among physicians interested in 338 FDG-PET exams performed between may 2000 and march 2002 in order to compare its own results with international literature concerning four indications for lung cancer: pulmonary nodule or mass malignancy diagnostic, lung carcinoma extension evaluation, therapeutic efficiency, recurrence suspicion.
Results: There seems to be no divergence, regarding limitation induced by the not exhaustive analysis of the retrospective study: more than every two FDG-PET exam highly influenced the effective therapy.
Conclusion: That is why clinical FDG-PET has to be widely developed to investigate lung cancer.