Metabolic Tumour Volume as a Predictor of Survival for Sinonasal Tract Squamous Cell Carcinoma.

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: High uptake of F18-fluorodeoxyglucose parameters for glucose metabolism is related to shorter survival in sinonasal tract cancer with various histological classifications. We investigated whether F18-fluorodeoxyglucose uptake parameters are associated with survival outcomes for patients with only squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) in the sinonasal tract that are treated either with surgery or nonsurgery. METHODS: We retrospectively observed F18-fluorodeoxyglucose uptake parameters on positron emission tomography with computed tomography for the primary tumour of SCC in 39 patients. Log-rank test or a Cox regression model with 95% confidence interval (95%CI) and hazard ratio (HR) were used for monovariable or multivariable analysis, respectively. We determined cut-off values of the F18-fluorodeoxyglucose uptake parameters using the lowest p value for monovariable sinonasal tract cancer-specific survival analysis. RESULTS: Monovariable analysis showed that patients with metabolic tumour volume (MTV) ≥ 21.8 had a shorter cancer-specific, disease-free and local recurrence-free survival than those with MTV < 21.8. After adjusting for age, gender, clinical stage and treatment group in the multivariable analysis, MTV (≥21.8/<21.8) was related to shorter cancer-specific (HR 3.69, 95%CI 1.17-12.0), disease-free (HR 3.38, 95%CI 1.19-9.71) and local recurrence-free (HR 5.42, 95%CI 1.59-20.3) survivals. CONCLUSIONS: MTV as advances in diagnostics of sinonasal tract SCC is a predictor.