By providing additional functional information and in the correct setting, FDG PET-CT can allow earlier detection of tumours, identification of occult metastatic disease, characterisation of indeterminate lesions, assessment of therapeutic response and overall more accurate staging for potential resection.
The added value of 18 F-fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG) positron emission tomography (PET) scanning as a function of pretest risk assessment in indeterminate pulmonary nodules is still unclear.
Clinical assessment was indeterminate for six patients (14.3%) (Table 3).
In another seven patients, the initial cytological assessment was indeterminate, but these patients were not available for a further FNA.
It may be useful in assessment of indeterminate lesions found at mammography, which are of low to moderate suspicion, as it appears to have a high negative predictive value of over 90% for masses [ 80].
To provide a complete comparison between methods, when ILA was the primary outcome we assessed controls as those that both included and excluded participants indeterminate for ILA by visual assessment.
Remarkably, in the indeterminate result group, at all assessment points the HRQoL scores were worse than those in the group with negative results.
Results of the repeated-measures analysis (adjusted for gender, age, education, smoking status, and smoking pack-years) showed no statistically significant differences in the SF-12 scores (MCS and PCS) between subjects with a negative and an indeterminate result at the two assessment points.
Population characteristics of participants without ILA and indeterminate for ILA defined by visual assessment and the interobserver variability of ILA assessments in both the COPDGene and FHS have been presented previously [ 9, 10].
Clinical responses were graded as cure, failure, or indeterminate at the test-of-cure assessment.
