Dutch doctors sought a pelvic lymph node staging technique that was less likely to involve complications (compared to lymphadenectomy) while also providing greater accuracy than other imaging procedures. Their research, published in the March 2003 issue of The Journal of Nuclear Medicine, probed the effectiveness of 11C-Choline PET scans in detecting and staging these tumors.
Of the 67 prostate cancer patients who participated in the study, 15 had histologically proven pelvic lymph node tumors. Other imaging techniques, such as CT and MRI, can identify tumors that change the size or shape of the lymph nodes; however, tumors do not always have this effect. As a result, CT and MRI scans only detected the spread of the disease in 7 of 15 cases. 11C-Choline PET scans, by contrast, presented true positive results for 12 of the 15 cases.
As revealed in the research, I1C-Choline PET scans were not only more sensitive in detecting pelvic lymph node tumors but also effective in determining their development stage; the overall accuracy of 11C-Choline PET scans in this study was 93%. Clearly, this technique shows promise as a safe, non-invasive lymph node tumor staging method for prostate cancer patients.
Preoperative Staging of Pelvic Lymph Nodes in Prostate Cancer by 11C-Choline PET was written by Igle J. de Jong, MD, PhD, Department of Urology and PET Center, Jan Pruim, PhD, Philip H. Elsinga, PhD, and William Vaalburg, PhD, of the PET Center, and Han J. Mensink, PhD, Department of Urology; all from Groningen University Hospital, Groningen, The Netherlands.
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Journal of Nuclear Medicine