Clinical significance of incidental findings on staging positron emission tomography for oesophagogastric malignancies

Introduction

The aim of this retrospective study was to determine the clinical significance of incidental findings detected on positron emission tomography (PET) in patients undergoing staging of oesophagogastric malignancies.

Methods

Patients with oesophagogastric malignancies who underwent PET between June 2007 and May 2012 were included in the study. PET was performed according to hospital protocol. All imaging was interpreted by two consultant radiologists in nuclear medicine. Incidental findings that were unrelated to the primary malignancy were recorded and patients were recommended to have further investigations (imaging, endoscopy and biopsy).

Results

Overall, 333 patients (240 male, 93 female; mean age: 67 years) with upper gastrointestinal malignancies were eligible for inclusion in the study. Eighty-nine of these patients had PET demonstrating one or more incidental findings. Two patients were found to have a second primary malignancy. One patient had a distant metastasis of his primary cancer and six patients had a premalignant lesion.

Conclusions

In this study, incidental findings were discovered in 26.7% of patients with known oesophagogastric cancer. A second primary cancer or premalignant lesion was found in 8.4% of patients with incidental findings. Patients with these findings should be investigated to rule out further malignancy. There were a high proportion of false positive results in our study. It is recommended that each patient is considered on an individual basis and assessed with simultaneous PET and computed tomography.