Abstract:
OBJECTIVE To evaluate the effectiveness of18F-FDG PET/CT for detecting additional tumor foci in breast cancer. MATERIAL-METHOD The data were reviewed retrospectively of 232 women who underwent18F-FDG PET/CT examination prior to breast cancer surgery between January 2013 and December 2018. RESULTS Additional tumor foci were suspected in 95 cases on18F-FDG PET/ CT, which were confirmed by histopathological analysis in 81 cases. The sen-sitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, negative predictive value, and overall accuracy of18F-FDG PET/CT in detection of additional tumor foci were 77.7%, 79.48%, 66.3%, 87.32%, and 79.23%, respectively. The false negative and false positive rates were 22.22% and 20.51%, respectively. In univariate analysis, only the patient’s age was positively associated with accuracy of 18 F-FDG PET/CT in detecting additional tumor foci. The accuracy was lower in women aged ≤50 years, with a substantial increase in false positive findings in women in that age group. CONCLUSIONS18F-FDG PET/CT alone cannot replace conventional diagnostic procedures for evaluating additional tumor foci in breast cancer, as a substantial increase in false positive findings is recorded with this method in women aged ≤50 years old. © Athens Medical Society.