Imaging with 18-F-fluorodeoxyglucose labeled positron emission tomography (18F-FDG PET) can give an early indication of whether non-small cell lung cancer patients are responding to chemotherapy, researchers report. Imaging with 18-F-fluorodeoxyglucose labeled positron emission tomography (18F-FDG PET) can give an early indication of whether non-small cell lung cancer patients are responding to chemotherapy, researchers report in the May issue of The Journal of Nuclear Medicine.

Lead investigator Dr. Claude Nahmias of the University of Tennessee, Knoxville and colleagues employed this approach in 16 patients who underwent two courses of therapy with docetaxel and carboplatin. They were studied weekly for seven weeks. Tissue activity was assessed by the amount of radioactivity retained 90 minutes after the intravenous injection of 18-F-FDG.

Of the 15 patients who completed the study, eight were nonresponders and died within 35 weeks of the end of the study. Of the seven responders, one died after 25 weeks, another by 76 weeks, but the rest survived.

A retrospective analysis showed that a decrease of 0.5 in the standardized uptake value between studies conducted one week and three weeks after chemotherapy begins was predictive of survival for more than six months.

"Although we studied a relatively small number of patients and our results should be interpreted with caution," the researchers point out, "it is clear that a repeat 18F-FDG PET study at the end of the first cycle of chemotherapy would allow identification of those patients in whom the therapy was futile."

Commenting on the findings, co-researcher Dr. David Townsend, also at the University of Tennessee, told Reuters Health that the approach "has the potential to improve care by identifying those patients who are not benefiting from a particular treatment early on...thus allowing the oncologist to change to a different and more effective therapeutic approach.

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