Background: Soft-tissue sarcomas (STS) represent a wide heterogeneous class of rare tumors. The exact role 18F-fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission/computed tomography (18F-FDG PET/CT) in the evaluation of STS is not well established. The aim of the present study was to evaluate how the use of 18F-FDG PET/CT in STS could influence patient therapy planning, looking for a possible added value over computed tomography and magnetic resonance imaging-the most used modalities in the study of STS. Differences in SUVmax according to histologic subtype and tumor grade were also considered.
Methods: a total of 345 consecutive 18F-FDG PET/CT scans performed for initial staging (n = 171) or for suspected disease relapse (n = 174) in 282 patients with STS extracted from the local Information System database were retrospectively reviewed.
Results: 18F-FDG PET/CT altered therapy planning in 80 cases (16.4% for staging and 29.9% in restaging), both for disease upstaging (58.8%) and downstaging (41.2%) Conclusions: 18F-FDG PET/CT could significantly influence management of patients with STS, particularly for restaging.
Keywords: 18F-FDG PET/CT; patient management; soft tissue sarcoma; staging.