Comparison of whole body positron emission tomography (PET)/PET-computed tomography and conventional anatomic imaging for detecting distant malignancies in patients with head and neck cancer: a meta-analysis.

OBJECTIVES/HYPOTHESIS: We aimed to compare the accuracy of whole body positron emission tomography (PET)/PET-computed tomography (CT) and conventional anatomic imaging for detecting distant malignancies in patients with head and neck cancer.

STUDY DESIGN

Meta-Analysis.

METHODS

We performed a meta-analysis of all available studies. We compared the performance of whole body PET/PET-CT with that of conventional anatomic imaging by analyzing studies that had also used conventional anatomic imaging on the same patients.

RESULTS

Across eight studies (1,147 patients), sensitivity and specificity of PET/PET-CT were 0.83 (95% confidence interval [CI], 0.76-0.88) and 0.96 (95% CI, 0.94-0.97), respectively, and for conventional anatomic imaging were 0.44 (95% CI, 0.29-0.61) and 0.96 (95% CI, 0.88-0.98), respectively. Subgroup analysis showed that PET/PET-CT had higher sensitivity than conventional anatomic imaging for nasopharyngeal cancer (0.82 vs. 0.30) and non-nasopharyngeal head and neck cancer (0.85 vs. 0.62).

CONCLUSIONS

Compared with conventional anatomic imaging, whole body PET/PET-CT has excellent diagnostic performance for detecting distant malignancies in patients with head and neck cancer.