Objective To explore whether the prognostic efficiency of international prognostic index (IPI) can be further improved by interim 18F-fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG) PET/CT.Methods A total of 185 patients (116 males,69 females;average age 49 years) with pathologically confirmed diffuse large Bcell lymphoma (DLBCL) from January 2004 to January 2014 were enrolled in this retrospective study.The risk was classified by IPI (0-2 was considered as low risk,3-5 was considered as high risk) and all patients underwent 18F-FDG PET/CT scan before and after 4 cycles of immunochemotherapy.Based on interim 18 F-FDG PET/CT imaging,5-point Deauville score was used to reclassify DLBCL patient into negative group and positive group,and the interpretations were evaluated for 2-year progression-free survival (PFS) and overall survival (OS) rates.Kaplan-Meier analysis,log-rank test and Cox regression were used for data analysis.Results With a median follow-up of 27 (2-146) months,the 2-year PFS and OS rates were 60％(111/185) and 81％(150/185),respectively.A total of 114 patients were included in the low-risk group and 71 patients were in the high-risk group.Both 2-year PFS rates and OS rates between the 2 groups were statistically different:72％(82/114) vs 37％(26/71),x2=20.86,P＜0.01;90％(103/114) vs 63％(45/71),x2=13.39,P＜0.01.The interim PET/CT showed 113 patients with negative results and 72 patients with positive results,whose 2-year PFS rates and OS rates were also statistically different:82％ (93/113) vs 24％(17/72),x2 =66.66,P＜0.01;90％(102/113) vs 51％(37/72),x2 =33.11,P＜0.01.In the low-risk group,85 patients were PET-negative and 29 patients were PET-positive.The 2-year PFS rates were 88％ (75/85) and 31％(9/29),respectively (x2 =35.52,P＜0.01).The 2-year OS rates were 96％ (82/85) and 66％(19/29),respectively (x2 =11.88,P＜0.01).In the high-risk group,28 patients were PET-negative and 43 patients were PET-positive.The 2-year PFS and OS rates were 64％(18/28) vs 19％(8/43;x2 =17.33,P＜0.01) and 86％(24/28) vs 49％(21/43;x2=9.95,P＜0.01),respectively.Conclusions Both IPI and interim 18F-FDG PET/CT have the prognostic value for patients with DLBCL.Interim 18F-FDG PET/CT can improve the prognostic efficiency of IPI.

Objective To explore the differences in the prognosis of patients with different immunophenotypes gastrointestinal diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (GI-DLBCL) who received different treatment strategies.Methods From March 2006 to January 2016,at Nanfang Hospital,Southern Medical University in Guangzhou,the clinical data of 99 patients with pathologically confirmed GI-DLBCL were retrospectively analyzed.According to treatment strategies,patients were divided into chemotherapy alone group and combination of surgery and chemotherapy group.According to immunophenotypes,patients were divided into germinal center B-cell-like (GCB) type and non-GCB type.The two-year progression-free survival (PFS) rate and overall survival (OS) rate were evaluated.Kaplan-Meier analysis,log-rank test and Cox regression were performed for statistical analysis.Results Among the 99 patients with GI-DLBCL,51 patients were treated with chemotherapy alone,and 48 patients were treated with combination of surgery and chemotherapy.Forty-one cases were GCB phenotype and 40 cases were non-GCB phenotype.The median follow-up time was 25 months.The two-year PFS and OS rates were 70.9％ and 89.5％,respectively.The two-year PFS and OS rates of chemotherapy alone group were 63.6％ and 85.0％,respectively;both were lower than those of combination of surgery and chemotherapy group (79.4％ and 94.7％),and the differences were statistically significant (x2 =4.232,P =0.040 and x2 =4.260,P =0.039).The two-year PFS and OS rates of GCB group were 68.8％ and 93.9％,respectively.And the two-year PFS and OS rates of non-GCB group were 73.2％ and 85.6％,respectively.There were no statistically significant differences between these two groups (both P ＞ 0.05).Among 41 patients with GCB type,25 were treated with combination of surgery and chemotherapy and 16 were treated with chemotherapy alone.The two-year PFS rate of patients treated with combination of surgery and chemotherapy (83.1％) was higher than that of patients treated with chemotherapy alone (49.2％),and the difference was statistically significant (x2 =5.627,P =0.018).The results of multivariate analysis indicated that treatment strategy was not an independent prognostic factor for all the enrolled patients and in patients with GCB type (all P ＞ 0.05).Conclusions Immunophenotypes may lack evaluation value of prognosis in patients with GI-DLBCL.Although among all the enrolled patients and patients with GCB type,the prognosis of patients treated with combination of surgery and chemotherapy is better than that of patients treated with chemotherapy alone,treatment strategy is not an independent prognostic factor.Multi-factors should be evaluated before selection of treatment strategy.

Objective:To compare the image quality and the diagnostic efficiency for breast malignant lesions using simultaneous multi-slice single shot echo planar imaging (SMS+SS-EPI) and readout segment of long variable echo trains (RESOLVE) for breast diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI).Methods:This study was a cross-sectional study. Clinical and imaging data of 102 patients with breast lesion from March 2021 to February 2023 in the First Hospital Affiliated to Ningbo University were prospectively analyzed. All patients underwent routine breast MRI scans and cross-sectional RESOLVE and SMS+SS EPI sequence DWI, and the image quality of 2 types sequences of DWI was evaluated. The subjective evaluation was based on a 5-point scale, including geometric distortion, artifact blurring, fat suppression, overall image quality, and lesion conspicuity of the breast. The objective evaluation included signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), contrast-to-noise ratio (CNR), and apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) value of the lesion. Wilcoxon signed rank sum test was used to compare the subjective and objective parameters between the two sequences. Finally, the receiver operating characteristic curve and area under the curve (AUC) were used to evaluate the effectiveness of ADC values for diagnosing breast malignant lesions based on two sequence images.Results:All 102 female patients had single lesions, aged from 25 to 68 years and 60 lesions were malignant and 42 were benign. The acquisition time for SMS+SS-EPI sequence imaging was 1 min 50 s, and the acquisition time for RESOLVE sequence imaging was 3 min 43 s.The subjective scores from both SMS+SS-EPI and RESOLVE sequence were over than 3 points. The geometric distortion, artifact blurring, and overall image quality scores of RESOLVE sequence images were higher than those of SMS+SS-EPI (all P<0.001). The overall lesion conspicuity score, malignant lesion conspicuity score, and benign lesion conspicuity score of DWI and ADC images combined with SMS+SS-EPI sequence were higher than those of the RESOLVE sequence (all P<0.05). There were no statistically difference in SNR, CNR, overall ADC value, malignant ADC value, and benign ADC value between SMS+SS-EPI and RESOLVE sequence DWI images of breast lesions (all P>0.05). The AUC of RESOLVE sequence ADC value in diagnosis of breast cancer was 0.973, the sensitivity was 0.929, and the specificity was 0.915; The AUC of SMS+SSC-EPI sequence ADC value in diagnosis of breast cancer was 0.956, the sensitivity was 0.977, and the specificity was 0.850. Conclusions:In breast DWI, the subjective score of SMS+SS EPI image quality can basically meet the diagnostic requirements and the conspicuity of lesions is better than that of the RESOLVE sequence. Both have good diagnostic efficacy for malignant breast lesions.

INTRODUCTION: We aimed to compare the early clinical manifestations, laboratory results and chest computed tomography (CT) images of COVID-19 patients with those of other community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) patients to differentiate CAP from COVID-19 before reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction results are obtained. METHODS: The clinical and laboratory data and chest CT images of 51 patients were assessed in a fever observation ward for evidence of COVID-19 between January and February 2020. RESULTS: 24 patients had laboratory-confirmed COVID-19, whereas 27 individuals had negative results. No statistical difference in clinical features was found between COVID-19 and CAP patients, except for diarrhoea. There was a significant difference in lymphocyte and eosinophil counts between COVID-19 and CAP patients. In total, 22 (91.67%) COVID-19 patients had bilateral involvement and multiple lesions according to their lung CT images; the left lower lobe (87.50%) and right lower lobe (95.83%) were affected most often, and all lesions were located in the peripheral zones of the lung. The most common CT feature of COVID-19 was ground-glass opacity, found in 95.83% of patients, compared to 66.67% of CAP patients. CONCLUSION Diarrhoea, lymphocyte counts, eosinophil counts and CT findings (e.g. ground-glass opacity) could help to distinguish COVID-19 from CAP at an early stage of infection, based on findings from our fever observation ward.
COVID-19/diagnostic imaging* ; China ; Community-Acquired Infections/diagnostic imaging* ; Diarrhea/pathology* ; Fever ; Humans ; Lung/diagnostic imaging* ; Retrospective Studies ; SARS-CoV-2 ; Tomography, X-Ray Computed/methods*