PET/CT result interpretation

Kine

I have received the test results from PET/CT, and it seems to be rather good.



I am a bit worried about this sentence (translated from norwegian, might not be accurate):



"Mild heterogeneous FDG activity in some vertebras, but no convincing evidence/clue for metastases."



Does anyone have any insight on how to understand this?



(This cancer tour is rather stressful sometimes)



Thanks in advance!

christine47

Sounds to me like there is some uptake in the vertabras area, but not mets.  Inflammation, arthritis, previous injury, all can show up in PET/CT scans.  I would say this sounds like a good report. 

Kine

Thanks for your reply, I hope you are right :-)



The rest of the report is also positive, but I have one more issue from the report.



It says:

"There are some marked lymph nodes in the para aoerta, but none shows increased FDG metabolism."



Could I dare to interprete this as good also you think?

Kine

Anyone else with similar report or general insight on pet/ct reports?



Any answer is appreciated.

carcharm

I wondered if anyone has seen this. A pt dx with lung cancer and active ln has chemo. Post chemo they decide to remove the tumor and nodes. The path show no cancer in any ln or in the tumor in the lung. They took many nodes. Is this possible? The path showed radiation effects to the tissue and granulomas. Is it possible the doctor misdiagnosed the pt??

Cristiana2011

"Mild heterogeneous FDG activity in some vertebras, but no convincing evidence/clue for metastases."

I agree with Christine47. Also did you have chemotherapy?

"There are some marked lymph nodes in the para aoerta, but none shows increased FDG metabolism." To answer this is also important to know about previous chemotherapy. Did you have any PET before?

Cristiana2011

Is it possible the doctor misdiagnosed the pt??

Inflammation can show up in PET/CT scans and this is possible after the chemotherapy as the path said - radiation effect to the tissue causes which means infalmmation cause a higher FDG uptake. So it was a false positive result which can happen and probably it was pondered before the surgery.

Kine

Thanks for your responces. I had no chemotherapy or radiation prior to PET/CT.



Had my first chemo on tuesday, and has been off line since, too sick to even worry.



I met my oncologist on monday, and he seems to think the results are good, hopefully he is right.