A Comparative Study between 18F-FDG PET/CT and Conventional Imaging in the Evaluation of Progressive Disease and Recurrence in Ovarian Carcinoma

Abstract

The aim of this study is to compare the efficiency of conventional imaging and 18F-FDG PET-CT in detecting progressive disease and recurrences over a period of one year (2018), in the case of ovarian cancer, and also to assess the importance of 18F-FDG PET/CT in changing the course of the treatment for these patients. This study included 29 patients diagnosed in various stages with ovarian carcinoma, most of them of epithelial origin. All patients were evaluated throughout their treatment using 18F-FDG PET/CT and various conventional techniques (computed tomography (CT), magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), abdominal and intravaginal ultrasound, chest X-ray). PET/CT was more useful and effective in our group of patients in detecting progressive disease compared with conventional imaging (37.93% vs. 17.24%) and also in establishing the recurrences (24.14% vs. 6.90%). Moreover, F18-FDG PET-CT led to a therapeutic change in 55.17% of the patients of our group, compared with only 17.24% after conventional imaging. This underlines the crucial aspect of the metabolic changes of tumors that should be assessed alongside the morphological ones, with PET-CT imaging remaining the only viable tool for achieving that at present. PET/CT with 18F-FDG represents one of the most important imaging techniques used in the diagnosis and management of ovarian carcinoma. Our results seem to fall in line with what other authors reported, indicating that 18F-FDG PET-CT is potentially gaining more ground in the management of ovarian carcinoma, by influencing therapeutic strategies and by being able to detect relapse and progression accurately.