Impacto de la PET-FDG sobre el manejo terapéutico de pacientes con sospecha de recurrencia tumoral por cánceres de cabeza y cuello

Objective. This study aims to evaluate the impact of Positron Emission Tomography on therapeutic decisions in patients with suspicion of recurrence of head and neck cancers. Material and methods. The diagnostic and therapeutic impact of FDG-PET was evaluated in 59 of 60 studies performed in a sample of 54 patients. The impact was graded on five levels (high, moderate, low, no impact and negative impact) following the Hicks et al. classification modified by us. Results. The FDG-PET impact was high in 28 studies (47.46 %), moderate in 7 (11.86 %), low in 20 (33.90 %), no impact in 3 (5.09 %) and finally negative impact in 1 study (1.69 %). Conclusions. FDG-PET is useful in the management of patients in 59.32 % of the studies with indeterminate physical examination and conventional imaging tests. This paper supplies new data since we did not find any studies showing statistical results on therapeutic impact of FDG-PET in head and neck cancers in a systematic review of the literature made by our group.