Metabolic activity of primary tumour on PET/CT has a relationship with survival in stages I-III small-cell lung carcinoma.

INTRODUCTION

There is limited evidence about the prognostic value of FDG-PET/CT metrics in small cell lung cancer (SCLC) patients staged with TNM staging system.

OBJECTIVES

The aim of this study is to examine the prognostic value of pretreatment FDG-SUV in patients with SCLC staged with 8th TNM staging system.

METHODS

A total of 344 (292 male) SCLC patients with pretreatment FDG- PET/CT were included. One hundred fifty-three of cases were stages I-III, 191 were stage IV. SUV values were obtained for primary tumour, lymph nodes and metastases. Univariate and multivariate analysis were performed to determine the effect of pretreatment SUV with cut-off value of median, on progression-free and overall survival (PFS and OS).

RESULTS

Median OS and PFS for patients with stages I-III were 16.50 and 11.00 months, respectively. Median OS and PFS for patients with stage IV were 10.00 and 7.00 months, respectively. SUV of the primary tumour (PT), lymph nodes or metastasis were not associated with OS and PFS on univariate analysis. On multivariate analysis, SUV -PT with cut-off value of 11.60 was found to be an independent prognostic factor for OS in patients with stages I-III (HR;1.88, 95% CI:1.15-3.08, P = .012). But the SUV -PT (HR; 1.60, 95% CI: 0.99-2.60; P = .057) for PFS was found to be a prognostic factor with marginal significance. SUV were not significantly associated with OS and PFS in patients with stage IV disease.

CONCLUSION

Pretreatment SUV -PT (median cut-off 11.6) may have a prognostic value of OS and PFS in patients with TNM staged I-III SCLC.