Abstract
Purpose
The primary aim of the present study was to evaluate if PET/MR induced management changes versus standard of care imaging (SCI) in treated colorectal cancer patients. The secondary aim was to assess the staging performance of PET/MR and of SCI versus the final oncologic stage.
Methods
Treated CRC patients who underwent PET/MR with 18F-FDG and SCI between January 2016 and October 2018 were enrolled in this retrospective study. Their medical records were evaluated to ascertain if PET/MR had impacted on their clinical management versus SCI. The final oncologic stage, as reported in the electronic medical record, was considered the true stage of disease.
Results
A total of 39 patients who underwent 42 PET/MR studies were included, mean age 56.7 years (range 39–75 years), 26 males, and 13 females. PET/MR changed clinical management 15/42 times (35.7%, standard error ± 7.4%); these 15 changes in management were due to upstaging in 9/42 (21.5%) and downstaging in 6/42 (14.2%). The differences in management prompted by SCI versus PET/MR were statistically significant, and PET/MR outperformed SCI (P value < 0.001; odds ratio = 2.8). In relation to the secondary outcome, PET/MR outperformed the SCI in accuracy of oncologic staging (P value = 0.016; odds ratio = 4.6).
Conclusions
PET/MR is a promising imaging tool in the evaluation of treated CRC and might change the management in these patients. However, multicenter prospective studies with larger patient samples are required in order to confirm these preliminary results.
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Funding
This study was supported in part by the Fundacao de Amparo a Pesquisa do Estado de Sao Paulo (FAPESP 2017/27205-2), Brazil.
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All procedures were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. This retrospective study had been conducted under IRB approval granted by Partners Healthcare Institutional Review Board (IRB), Protocol no. 2018P001334. Patient consent has been waived by IRB.
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This article is part of the Topical Collection on Oncology – Digestive tract
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Amorim, B.J., Hong, T.S., Blaszkowsky, L.S. et al. Clinical impact of PET/MR in treated colorectal cancer patients. Eur J Nucl Med Mol Imaging 46, 2260–2269 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00259-019-04449-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00259-019-04449-7