RESUMO
BACKGROUND: This work aims to present a nuclear medicine imaging service's data regarding applying positron emission-computing tomography (PET/CT) scans with the radiopharmaceutical 68Ga-PSMA-HBED-CC (68Ga-PSMA-11) to diagnose prostate cancer clinical relapse. METHODS: Eighty patients with a mean age of 68.26 years and an average prostatic-specific antigen blood level of 7.49 ng/ml (lower concentration = 0.17 ng/ml) received 68Ga-PSMA-11 intravenously, and full-body images of PET-CT scan were obtained. Of the total of patients admitted to the imaging service, 87.5% were examined for disease's biochemical recurrence and clinical relapse, and 70.0% had a previous radical prostatectomy (RP). RESULTS: Of the patients without RP, 95.8% were detected with intra-glandular disease. The 68Ga- PSMA-11 PET/CT imaging results revealed small lesions, even in patients with low blood levels of prostatic-specific antigen, mainly in metastatic cancer cases in lymph nodes and bones. CONCLUSION: The 68Ga-PSMA-11 PET/CT imaging was essential in detecting prostate cancer, with significantly high sensitivity in detecting recurrent cases. Due to its inherent reliability and sensitivity, PET/CT scanning with 68Ga-PSMA-11 received an increasing number of medical requests throughout the present follow-up study, confirming the augmented demand for this clinical imaging procedure in the regional medical community.
