الفهرس | Only 14 pages are availabe for public view |
Abstract 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. Cancer staging is essential in determining the choice of therapy, as well as a patient’s prognosis and chances for survival. Conventional imaging cannot precisely detect axillary lymph node involvement and/or the presence of distant metastases, which significantly change therapeutic management of these patients. Whole-body 18F-FDG PET/CT has proven to be an effective imaging modality for staging of malignant tumors. Combined 18-FDG PET/CT provides the ability to combine functional and morphologic information in a single study, thus becoming a powerful imaging modality for diagnosis & staging of breast cancer. Our data are in agreement with the previous studies has demonstrated that PET/CT is the technique of choice and indispensable tool for evaluation of the patients with breast cancer. Combined PET/CT has proved its effectiveness that outweighs the other methods in the staging of the disease. The use of combined PET/CT in patients with breast cancer improves the sensitivity, specificity and accuracy of local extent of the disease, axillary and extra-axillary lymph nodes involvement as well as detection of the distant metastasis compared to CT alone. The use of diagnostic contrast enhanced CT with PET/CT helps in better anatomical localization and in addition it constitute a base line exam for staging and follow up if PET/CT is not affordable and only CT will be used.. |