J Nucl Med. 2007; 48 (Supplement 2):118P
General Clinical Specialties: Pediatrics
Pediatrics I |
18F-FDG PET/CT applications in children: One year experience in a tertiary care setting
Mohei Abouzied1,
Abdelaziz Al-sugair2,
Husain Meer2,
Tarek Munshi2,
Rushana Parker2,
Mohamed Alruwaili2 and
Ayman Rifai2
1 Nuclear Medicine, SUNY at Buffalo, Buffalo, New York; ;
2 Radiology, King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Center, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
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Objectives: [F-18]-fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG) positron emission tomography (PET) is recognized as a powerful imaging technique for a variety of disease conditions, mainly cancer, in adults. FDG PET-CT is also emerging as an important tool in evaluating children with a number of cancer diseases. This paper focuses on our experience in implementing PET-CT in a tertiary care pediatric referral center. Methods: During the period of October 2005 to May 2006 a total of 146 children with different types of cancer disease were scanned. Using 8 slice PET/CT system (Discovery TS;GE), utilizing low Kvp (80kVp), with 75 mA, Slice thickness of 3.75 mm, and Pitch of 1.675:1. Patients were scanned following the administration of 0.3 mCi/Kg of 18F-FDG. After 60 minutes acquisition time patients were scanned from base of the skull to mid thigh, unless indicated otherwise by the nuclear medicine physician to include the brain and the lower limbs. General anaesethia was performed to all patients less than 7 years to avoid excessive movement which affect the image registration and scan quality. Results: PET/CT was performed for 146 children, average age of 16 years (range 2 months to 18 years), 80 boys and 66 girls. The majority (83 children) 57% had lymphoma (HD and NHL) followed by 36 children with sarcoma (25%). Other types of cancer diseases included neuroblastoma (13), wilms tumor (7), nasopharyngeal carcinoma (4) and others (3). Neurological applications included 32 children; 21 with brain tumors and 11 with epilepsy. Children were referred for PET/CT to assess the response to therapy in 42% of the cases, to role out recurrent disease in 33% of the cases and finally for the initial staging in 25% of the cases. Potential sites of pitfalls and image artifacts included brown fat uptake in 62% of the cases, thymus uptake in 82 %, bowel uptake in 21% and finally genitourinary uptake in only 13%. Conclusions: FDG PET has been shown to be useful in the imaging evaluation of many pediatric tumors. It is expected that the future data will show that FDG PET/CT does contribute unique valuable information for the care of childhood tumors.
