抄録
Recently, many investigators have reported the usefulness of fluorodeoxyglucose-positron emission tomography (FDG-PET) for the diagnosis of malignant head and neck tumors. Little is known, however, about its application for the diagnosis of laryngeal carcinoma. In this study, we investigated the specificity and sensitivity of FDG-PET for detecting laryngeal squamous cell carcinoma before treatment. Thirty-two patients (31 male and 1 female) with laryngeal carcinoma who had visited the Kagoshima University Hospital between Jan. 2003 and Nov. 2005 were retrospectively investigated. All patients at stages T2, T3 and T4, showed FDG standardized uptake value (SUV) greater than 4.0 in the primary sites, except for one patient of T2. In contrast, 6 out of 10 cases diagnosed as T1 showed FDG SUV readings lower than 4.0. Four patients, in T1 and T2 stages, who had remarkably elevated FDG SUV levels in their primary tumors underwent surgical treatment such as partial laryngectomy and total laryngectomy followed by concurrent chemo-radio-therapy. Those findings suggest that PET is useful for the diagnosis of laryngeal carcinoma and that an elevated level of FDG SUV in the primary tumor might indicate higher biological activity of the carcinoma.
