RESUMO
AIMS: A study was undertaken to investigate the value of pretreatment PET-CT in predicting survival in patients with oesophageal cancer (OC). METHODS: Between June 2010 and December 2011, 18 consecutive OC patients median (61.00 ± 12.07 years) with median survival of 7.5 month had a pretreatment PET-CT scan. Staging of the disease was made in accordance to the American Joint Committee on Cancer staging system (7th edition) and grouped as stage I-IIA and stage IIB-IV. Maximum standardized uptake value (SUVmax), size of a primary tumour and the presence of fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG)-avid lymph nodes were evaluated for all patients. Survival was analysed using the Kaplan-Meier product limit method and Cox proportional hazards regression model. RESULTS: PET-CT stages I-IIA and IIB-IV had a 1-year survival of 50% and 25%, respectively. Patient with size of primary tumour (<4.5 cm) had significantly (p < 0.036) better survival than those with large size (>4.5 cm). Multivariate Cox regression analysis showed that SUVmax of >5.5 in the primary tumour [hazard ratio (HR) 23.017; 95% confidence interval, p = 0.038] and the presence of FDG-avid lymph node (HR 1.248; p = 0.028) were strongly predictive of poor overall survival on multivariate analysis. CONCLUSION: Pretreatment 18F-FDG PET-CT SUVmax of a primary tumour and the presence of FDG-avid lymph nodes independently predict survival in patients with oesophageal carcinoma which may potentially be used as surrogate markers for prognostic and therapeutic purposes.
