The role of fluorine-18-fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography in evaluating the response to tyrosine-kinase inhibitors in patients with metastatic primary renal cell carcinoma
Publicado en línea: 10 jul 2014
Páginas: 219 - 227
Recibido: 08 feb 2013
Aceptado: 21 ago 2013
DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/raon-2013-0067
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© by Carmelo Caldarella
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License, which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Background. Positron emission tomography-computed tomography (PET-CT) using fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG) is increasingly used in the evaluation of patients with advanced renal cell carcinoma (RCC), primarily for staging purposes. The aim of this paper is to perform a systematic review about the usefulness of PET-CT using FDG in response assessment after treatment with tyrosine-kinase inhibitors (TKIs) in patients with advanced RCC.
Materials and methods. The scientific literature about the role of PET-CT using FDG in the assessment of response to treatment with TKIs in patients affected by advanced RCC was systematically reviewed.
Results. Seven studies about the role of PET-CT using FDG in the response assessment after treatment with TKIs (essentially sunitinib and sorafenib) in advanced RCC were retrieved in full-text and analysed, to determine the predictive role of this morpho-functional imaging method on patient outcome.
Conclusions. To date, the role of PET-CT using FDG in evaluating the response to TKIs in metastatic RCC patients is still not well defined, partly due to heterogeneity of available studies; however, PET-CT reveals potential role for the selection of patients undergoing therapy with TKIs. The use of contrast-enhanced PET-CT appears to be promising for a “multi-dimensional” evaluation of treatment response in these patients.