Fluorine-18 fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography in the follow-up of differentiated thyroid cancer

Whole-body fluorine-18 fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG) positron emission tomography (PET) imaging was performed during the follow-up of 33 patients suffering from differentiated thyroid cancer. Among them there were 26 patients with papillary and seven with follicular tumours. Primary tumour stage (pT) was pT1 in six cases, pT2 in eight cases, pT3 in three cases and pT4 in 14 cases. FDG PET was normal in 18 patients. In three patients a slightly increased metabolism was observed in the thyroid bed, assumed to be related to remnant tissue. In one case local recurrence, in ten cases lymph node metastases (one false-positive, caused by sarcoidosis) and in three cases distant metastases were found with FDG PET. In comparison with whole-body scintigraphy using iodine-131 (WBS) there were a lot of discrepancies in imaging results. Whereas three patients had distant metastases (proven with¹³¹I) and a negative FDG PET, in four cases¹³¹I-negative lymph node metastases were detectable with PET. Even in the patients with concordant staging, differences between¹³¹I and FDG were observed as to the exact lesion localization. Therefore, a coexistence of¹³¹I-positive/FDG-negative,¹³¹I-negative/FDG-positive and¹³¹I-positive/FDG-positive malignant tissue can be assumed in these patients. A higher correlation of FDG PET was observed with hexakis (2-methoxyisobutylisonitrile) technetium-99m (I) (MIBI) scintigraphy (performed in 20 cases) than with WBS. In highly differentiated tumours¹³¹I scintigraphy had a high sensitivity, whereas in poorly differentiated carcinomas FDG PET was superior. The clinical use of FDG PET can be recommended in all cases of suspected or proven recurrence and/or metastases of differentiated thyroid cancer and is particularly useful in cases with elevated serum thyroglobulin levels and negative WBS.     

Validating a New Non-penetrating Sham Acupuncture Device：Two Randomised Controlled Trials

IntroductionIn clinical trials of the efficacy of manualtreatm ents like surgery or acupuncture,control groups are comm only given‘sham’procedures.Sham procedures,inorder to be true placebos,must be 1) in-distinguishable from the real treatm entand 2 ) inactive.In acupuncture trials,various controls for the process of insert-ing a needle and stimulating it have beenused.These include needling off point orat inappropriate points[1 ,2 ] ,pricking orscratching with blunt needle[3,4 ] ,needlingw…     

英国补充治疗的成本效果：系统性综述

补充治疗（包括针灸和草药——编者注）是否应该整合纳入英国国民医疗卫生服务体系（NHS），成本效益的数据资料成为争论的关键问题。但是，就我们所知，以前没有人对英国补充疗法的成本效益做过研究。