There have been various reports on studies of prognostic factors in oral cancer.
18F-Fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography (
18F-FDG PET) reveals the activity of glucose metabolism, and a qualitative evaluation is possible.
18F-FDG PET is already commonly used for staging. The aim of this study was to evaluate the prognosis and metabolic tumor factor of PET as an imaging biomarker.
Between January 2009 and December 2015, 154 patients were treated with oral squamous cell carcinoma and underwent PET/Computed Tomography (CT) in our department. No patients had previously undergone PET.
The subjects were 89 males and 65 females, with a mean age of 62.6. The most common primary site was the tongue. Locally advanced stage Ⅲ/Ⅳ accounted for the majority. The median follow-up period was 45.6 months.
Regarding the metabolic tumor factor of PET, standardized uptake values of SUVmax, SUVmean, Metabolic tumor volume (MTV), Total lesion glycolysis (TLG) and SUVmax volume ratio (SVR) were 9.8, 5.9, 4126, 28809 and 4.9. Thresholds were set to 12.0, 6.7, 3000, 16000 and 4.8 as the result of Receiver Operating Characteristic curve (ROC) analysis. There were 128 and 26 patients with sphere and ring shaped types.
Three-year disease-free survival (3yDFS) was 80.2%, and 3y overall survival (OS) was 87.2%. By univariate analysis with prognosis, T, stage, high risk, SUVmax, SUVmean, MTV, TLG and uptake pattern were correlated in OS and DFS. In addition, by multivariate analysis, SUVmax and uptake pattern were correlated in OS and DFS.
The results showed that PET is useful as an imaging biomarker.
View full abstract