PET–CT for the diagnosis and treatment of primary musculoskeletal tumors in Chinese patients - experience from 255 patients in a single center

Abstract

The current study was carried out to assess the value of PET/CT on the diagnosis and staging of primary musculoskeletal tumors. PET/CT test results and histopathologic study reports of all the patients with primary musculoskeletal tumors in our department from January 2006 to July 2015 were retrospectively reviewed. SUVmax in these PET/CT reports were recorded and analyzed respectively for each type of sarcoma. A total of 255 patients were included in the final analysis. Sensitivity of SUVmax based diagnosis was 96.6% for primary malignant osseous sarcomas and 91.2% for soft tissue sarcomas. SUVmax of high-grade osseous sarcomas (average 8.4 ± 5.5) was significantly higher (p < 0.001) than low-grade osseous sarcomas (average 3.9 ± 1.8); based on current case series, SUVmax of high-grade soft tissue sarcomas (7.5 ± 5.1) was not significantly different (p = 0.229) from that of low-grade soft tissue sarcomas (5.3 ± 3.7). Significant decrease of SUVmax value after chemotherapy was associated with favorable prognosis in patients with osteosarcoma. Results of the current study indicate that, the SUVmax based application of PET/CT can be a valuable supplementary method to histopathological tests regarding the diagnosis and staging of primary musculoskeletal sarcomas. SUVmax based application of PET/CT is a highly sensitive method in diagnosis of primary osseous and soft tissue sarcomas in Chinese patients.