Pediatric Brown Adipose Tissue on F-FDG PET: Diazepam Intervention.

Brown adipose tissue (BAT) has been widely reported to affect the efficacy of F-FDG PET in oncology. Several small studies have found that warming the patient both before F-FDG injection and during the uptake phase can reduce the frequency of BAT uptake. Pharmaceutical approaches such as propranolol and diazepam have also been used. We describe two case studies that demonstrated the impact of combined patient warming and diazepam administration on BAT uptake in pediatric F-FDG PET images. To support these findings, we performed a retrospective analysis of 139 patients: 71 who received warming only and 68 who received warming combined with diazepam. BAT uptake was significantly less frequent in patients who received diazepam (16.2%) than in those who did not (33.8%) ( = 0.0167), particularly in female patients (7.4% vs. 26.7%) ( = 0.0486). Although patient warming alone reduces the frequency of BAT uptake, the addition of diazepam to patient warming significantly furthers the reduction in young patients, particularly female patients.