Hanyang Medical Reviews  2007;27(4):23-27

The Use of PET in Esophageal Cancer.

Joon Young CHOI 1

Affiliations

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Keywords

Esophagus; Cancer; Positron emission tomography; PET/CT; (18)F-fluorodeoxyglucose

Country

Republic of Korea

Language

Korean

Abstract

Esophageal cancer is one of the gastrointestinal malignancies that have an unfavorable prognosis. Whole body positron emission tomography (PET) using F-18 Fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG) has been used for characterizing focal lesions, initial staging, monitoring recurrence, and post-therapeutic follow-up in arious malignant tumors. In esophageal cancer, FDG PET is not used for characterizing esophageal focal lesion. Due to better results for initial staging of esophageal cancer than chest CT or endoscopic ultrasound, especially in N and M staging, FDG PET provides valuable information for assessing prognosis and for selecting appropriate treatment. Although several studies are reported, FDG PET may be useful for restaging and detection of recurrence in esophageal cancer. For predicting pathological response to neoadjuvant therapy, FDG PET has been showed good results. Like other alignancies, integrated PET/CT is preferable to conventional PET in esophageal cancer considering better anatomical localization of hypermetabolic esions and accuracy.