Objective: To investigate positron emission tomography (PET) with (fluorine-18)-2-deoxyglucose (FDG) for detecting recurrent ovarian carcinoma.
Study design: Wholebody FDG-PET scanning was performed on five patients before surgical exploration. All five patients were suspected of having recurrence based upon clinical findings and underwent surgery after scanning.
Results: In all five patients, PET images demonstrated increased FDG uptake in a distribution that correlated with surgical-pathologic findings (100%); computer tomography can detect 60% of such patients with malignant disease. Two cases with unexplained elevated serum CA-125 had lesions localized by PET.
Conclusion: Recurrence of ovarian carcinoma was clearly imaged with FDG-PET and was confirmed by surgical pathology. FDG-PET might be a fairly effective tool for detecting recurrent ovarian carcinoma.