الفهرس 
INTRODUCTIONOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
Breast cancer is the most common cancer among women worldwide. It is one of the most common causes leading to death. Its prevention remains a challenge, thus early and accurate diagnosis are essential to achieve this target.
PET-CT provides the needed information about both the metabolic activity as well the anatomical location of the neoplasm combining the advantages of both conventional methods, CT and PET.
The present study evaluated 15 female patients with breast cancer who were previously operated by PET/CT for post-operative follow up.
Three groups of patients were chosen according to the referring cause for PET-CT post-operative follow up.
Group-1 presented with elevated markers, group-2 presented with non-conclusive conventional imaging findings and suspected metastasis and group-3 presented for follow up after chemotherapy and/or radiotherapy.
Group-1 showed that combined 18FDG-PET/CT imaging is an efficient technique to detect breast cancer recurrence suspected on tumor marker rising in asymptomatic patients. It may thus contribute to improve patient management, providing an earlier diagnosis with complete whole-body staging as an excellent procedure.
Group-2 showed that FDG-PET-CT is generally more sensitive in the detection of distant metastases than conventional imaging, and is therefore a more accurate method of determining recurrence of the disease.
Group-3 showed that FDG-PET-CT is highly useful for monitoring response to therapeutic interventions. This technique can identify response to therapy earlier than any other imaging method currently available which greatly improves patient management by allowing termination of ineffective and toxic therapies.
PET/CT is considered as the best diagnostic noninvasive imaging tool for post-operative follow up of breast cancer patients, as it has superior results over equivocal findings of the conventional imaging, greatest role in detection of newly developed lesions in patients with rising tumor markers and for its greatest impact on detection of the disease progression.
FDG/PET/CT has been shown to be of limited role in detecting purely osteosclerotic bone metastases due to hypo-metabolic activity of the lesions. While it is of an important role in detecting both lytic and mixed bone lesions.