The Role of PET/CT in Evaluation of Recently Diagnosed Breast Cancer

Abstract
Background: Breast cancer is the most common non-skin cancer and the second leading cause of cancer related death in women. Breast cancer strikes women of all ages, races, ethnicities, socioeconomic strata, and geographic locales. Once breast cancer is diagnosed, the tumor stage has to be accurately determined before therapy chosen and the prognosis known.
Aim of Study: To investigate the ability of 18F-FDG PET/CT to be used as a pre-operative assessment, staging and metastatic work up tool in patients with recently diagnosed breast cancer which is subsequently reflected in the manage-ment of breast cancer patients.
Patients and Methods: This study was carried out in Dokki Scan Radiology Center from April 2016 to October 2018 on a total number of 50 female patients with biopsy proved to have cancer breast. The age of the patients ranged from 27 to 78 years, and the average was 56.98. All exams were done on the PET/CT scanner Phillips Gemini & Siemens time of flight 64 & 20 machines respectively.
Results: Whole-body 18F-FDG PET/CT plays an important role in the assessment of breast cancer patients particularly as it helps detection of the extent of the disease in the body, improves staging of breast cancer patients which significantly changes the therapeutic management of these patients.
Conclusion: PET/CT proved to be an efficient, accurate and non-invasive imaging technique in detecting metastatic disease with subsequent modification of the initial patient staging management planes.