Diagnostic value of FDG PET-CT in differentiating lung adenocarcinoma from squamous cell carcinoma.

<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title><jats:sec>

<jats:title>Background</jats:title>

<jats:p>Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer-related deaths worldwide. The combination of fluorine-18 fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography (18F-FDG PET) and computed tomography (CT) has a major impact on the diagnosis, staging, treatment planning and follow-up of lung cancer patients. The maximum standardized uptake value (SUVmax) is an easily performed and most widely used semi-quantitative index for the analysis of FDG PET images and estimation of metabolic activity. This study aimed to investigate the role of PET/CT in differentiating adenocarcinoma (ADC), the most common lung cancer, from squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) by comparing FDG uptake measured as SUVmax.</jats:p>

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<jats:title>Results</jats:title>

<jats:p>Between 2019 and 2022, 76 patients diagnosed with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) at the Department of Pathology, Atatürk University Faculty of Medicine, with histopathologic evidence of adenocarcinoma or squamous cell carcinoma, underwent retrospective analysis using PET/CT scanning to measure PET parameters of the lesions and compare them with histopathology. Among 76 NSCLC patients included in the study, 43 (57%) were histopathologically diagnosed as ADC and 33 (43%) as SCC. SUVmax, SUVmean, metabolic tumor volume (MTV) and total lesion glycolysis (TLG) values of lesions in patients with SCC were statistically significantly higher than those in patients with ADC (<jats:italic>p</jats:italic> values 0.007, 0.009, 0.003 and 0.04, respectively).</jats:p>

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<jats:title>Conclusions</jats:title>

<jats:p>Lung SCC has higher metabolic uptake values than ADC, and PET/CT can be used to differentiate them.</jats:p>

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