Audiovisual intervention alleviates anxiety of patients during PET/CT imaging.

AIM: to assess if the use of an audiovisual intervention in the uptake room and/or in the scanning room, could help to reduce anxiety during [18F]FDG PET/CT imaging. METHODS: We prospectively studied 120 patients referred for [18F]FDG PET/CT imaging. Patients were allocated in 4 groups of 30 patients depending on the use of the audiovisual intervention: (1) no audiovisual intervention; (2) audiovisual intervention only in the uptake room; (3) audiovisual intervention only in the scanning room; (4) audiovisual intervention in the uptake and the scanning rooms. In order to measure the anxiety levels of the patients before and after the scan, all patients answered the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI). RESULTS: The anxiety status across typical situations on a daily basis (STAI-T) of the 4 groups of patients was comparable with no significant differences. The mean State Anxiety (STAI-S) sum-score at prescan and postscan among groups was: (1) 17.5±8.7 vs. 17.3±8.6, p=0.834; (2) 17.4±10.5 vs. 15.8±9.6, p=0.110; (3) 17.5±11.7 vs. 15.1±9.8, p= 0.013; (4) 17.4±9.7 vs. 14.9±8.1, p= 0.009. The percentage of patients with reduction of the STAI-S score among groups 1-4 was 17%, 47%, 50%, and 66%, respectively. The variation of the percentage of patients with lower scores after intervention among groups was statistically significant (p<0.001). CONCLUSION: Audiovisual intervention decreases anxiety levels of patients referred for PET/CT imaging. The results of our study support a beneficial effect of the audiovisual intervention and its potential to alleviate the anxiety of oncological patients who undergo a PET/CT scan.

Brain metabolic changes in patients with disseminated malignant melanoma under immunotherapy.

Although there is evidence that chemotherapy can have side effects on metabolism and brain function, there are few studies on the occurrence of these side effects with immunotherapy. The present study was conducted to assess whether brain metabolic changes occur in patients with malignant melanoma under immunotherapy. Thirty-nine patients after surgical intervention and with a diagnosis of malignant melanoma were retrospectively included and were divided into two groups: one group under the first-line therapy with anti-programmed cell death-1 ± anti-cytotoxic T lymphocyte antigen-4 monoclonal antibodies and the other group without any treatment after surgery, which served as a control. Basal and follow-up whole body and brain 2-[ 18 F]fluoro-2-deoxy-D-glucose ( 18 F]FDG) PET/computed tomography (CT) studies were performed. Changes in brain glucose metabolism after treatment initiation of the immunotherapy group were compared with the findings in the control group. In addition, longitudinal regression analysis to investigate whether the time under immunotherapy influenced the changes of brain metabolism was performed. None of the patients presented cognitive impairment or other neurological alterations between basal and follow-up brain [ 18 F]FDG PET/CT examinations. The statistical analysis revealed a significant relative SUV (SUVr)-loss in the left frontal region in patients of the immunotherapy group compared with the control group, with radjusted = -0.62 and P = 0.008. Severity of SUVr-loss was correlated with duration of treatment. Patients with disseminated malignant melanoma receiving immunotherapy may present a decrease of brain metabolism in the left frontal region, which is related with time-under-treatment, without any clinical evidence of neurological disorder.