The usefulness of 18F-fluorocholine PET/CT in the detection of recurrence of central nervous system primary neoplasms.

AIM: To study the usefulness of 18F-fluorocholine (FCH) in detecting the recurrence of primary brain tumours. MATERIAL AND METHODS A prospective study was conducted on brain PET/CT with FCH for compassionate use in 21 patients with suspected recurrence of a primary brain tumour. The distribution by pathology was: three grade ii astrocytomas, three grade iii astrocytomas, one grade ii oligodendroglioma, three grade iii oligodendrogliomas, one grade iii oligoastrocytoma, four glioblastoma multiform, one gliomatosis cerebri, and five meningiomas. Studies in which there was a visually significant uptake in the brain parenchyma were classified as positive. RESULTS A total of 17 patients were classified as positive, with the results being confirmed by histology (10 cases) or clinical follow-up and imaging, with no false positives or negatives. The mean SUVmax for positive patients was 8.02 and 0.94 for the negative ones, which was significantly different (P=.003) CONCLUSION PET/CT with FCH shows encouraging results in the evaluation of patients with suspected recurrence of primary brain neoplasms.