Abstract
One of the most common cancers, colorectal cancer accounts for several tumor-related mortalities; its high recurrence rates either as a local recurrence of the disease or as a distant metastatic disease (up to 35-40%) have been reported in the treated patients within the first two years following surgery. There has been heated debate over the modality of choice for imaging the primary colorectal cancer.This study investigates the diagnostic performance of fused Positron Emission Tomography/ Computed Tomography (PET/CT) in comparison to Contrast-enhanced Computed Tomography(CECT) as a follow-up and restaging imaging tool for post-therapeutic colorectal cancers. Data were collected from 84 Egyptian patients (26 females and 58 males, age ranges from 35 to 80) who were treated from colorectal cancers. They were referred to a private imaging center for evaluation of their disease recurrence by fused PET/CT.Disease recurrence was categorized as operative bed recurrence/residual (incomplete therapeutic response), nodal, and distal metastases.With reference to histopathology reports, the fused PET\CT had sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, negative predictive value, and an overall accuracy of 93.33%, 83.33%, 93.33%, 83.33% & 90.48% respectively as compared to CECT(73.33%, 58.33%, 81.48%, 46.67%, 69. 05% respectively).Our findings indicate that fused PET\CT may be more effective than the CECT regarding the detection of operative bed recurrent disease and incomplete therapeutic responses. PET\CT may also offer a cost-effective whole-body scan for restaging the recurrent diseases through an accurate detection of the nodal and distant metastases.
Whole-body PET–CT colonography proves accurate for colorectal cancer staging
