Will Rogers phenomenon in the oesophageal cancer patients staging - CT versus 18F-FDG PET/CT: retrospective study

Objective: The oesophageal cancer is one of the most common and aggressive malignancies, especially in elder man. The method of choice in diagnosis of the oesophageal cancer patients are the contrast-enhanced computed tomography (CT) and the 2-deoxy-2-[F-18]fluoro-D-glucose positron emission tomography/computed tomography (18F-FDG PET/CT) examinations. The aim of this study was to evaluate and compare the contrast-enhanced CT and the F-18-FDG PET/CT methods of imaging in terms of the oesophageal cancer staging and restaging using the eighth edition of the tumor-node-metastasis (TNM) classification. The studied group consisted of 25 retrospectively analyzed patients (23 men, 2 women; mean age SD: 60 11 years, range: 33-78 years, median: 62 years, p=0.09) who underwent the contrast-enhanced CT and the F-18-FDG PET/CT scanning within one to eight weeks. All mentioned lesions were histopathologically examined. Among these patients, 12 did not receive any treatment and 13 subjects have been treated with the chemotherapy and the external beam radiotherapy using comparable therapeutic protocols. According to our results, in 13 subjects PET/CT method occurred as more sensitive in terms of pre- and posttreatment staging than CT and in 10 from 13 cases, involving the F-18-FDG PET/CT imaging into diagnostic management affected the therapeutic protocol. In 11 cases both methods showed comaparable or similar stage of the disease and in 1 patient both methods showed no pathology. In this material, the F-18-FDG PET/CT seems to be more accurate in terms of staging in case of the oesophageal cancer TNM classification.