Detektion von Phäochromozytomen und rekurrenten medullären Schilddrüsenkarzinomen mit F18 DOPA PET/CT

Abstract

Evaluating [18F]dihydroxyphenylalanine (DOPA) in patients with clinical suspicion for a primary or recurrent pheochromocytoma (pheo) by means of whole body PET/CT. In pheos PET/CT detects more lesions with a higher certainty with regard to PET or CT alone. The metabolic probe fluorine-18-dihydroxyphenylalanine (F-18-DOPA) was also evaluated in MTC patients by means of whole body PET/CT to localize resectable tumor lesions. The lesion classification relied mainly on pathological 18F-DOPA uptake, whereas the certainty of lesion location was markedly increased by the integrated PET/CT approach. Integrated F-18-DOPA-PET/CT is a promising diagnostic approach to identify residual disease in MTC patients, potentially increasing the rate of surgical cure. DOPA PET/CT is therefore a valuable diagnostic tool especially in management of MEN patients, since it detects pheos as well as recurrent MTC.