18F-fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography/computed tomography for predicting prognosis of small cell lung cancer patients

Background: the purpose of this study is to evaluate the accuracy of 18ffluorodeoxyglucose (fdg) positron emission tomography/computed tomography (pet/ct) in predicting tumor prognosis in patients with small cell lung cancer (sclc). materials and methods: from july 2015 to march 2019, all 30 sclc patients who had analyzable pet/cts and adequate clinical data were evaluated. medical records were retrospectively reviewed, including age, gender, stage, performance status according to the eastern cooperative oncology group (ecog), metabolic parameters on pet and treatment programs. factors potentially affecting tumor prognosis were examined by models of univariate and multivariate cox proportional hazards regression. results: the median age of the cohort was 58 years (range: 39-93). a median follow-up period of 12 months was observed. multivariate cox proportional hazards regression demonstrated that the overall survival (os) (p = 0.03) and progression-free survival (pfs) (p = 0.014) were related only to the metabolic tumor volume (mtv). the optimal cutoff threshold was 98 mm3, and the receiver operating characteristic (roc) curve had an area under it of 0.75. in comparison to the high-mtv group, the low-mtv group had statistically substantially prolonged os (p = 0.004) and pfs (p < 0.001). conclusion: the mtv of 18f-fdg pet/ct is a major independent prognostic factor in sclc patients and has significant implications for os and psf.