Diagnostic value of PET/CT in evaluation of breast cancer recurrence؛ A systematic review

Introduction: Breast cancer is the most frequently diagnosed form of cancer and the leading cause of cancerdeath in women worldwide. The first positron emission tomography/computed tomography(PET/CT) unit wasintroduced in ۲۰۰۰, as a noninvasive, one-stop evaluation, merging anatomic localization with a functionalimage that enables measurements of physiological function in the region scanned. The goal of this report wasto present review and compare the performance of PET/CT with some of the conventional imaging modalitiesin detection of breast cancer recurrence.Methods: This research is a systematic review study conducted through a search in pubmed, google scholar andscience direct databases. The key words used are “PET/CT”, “Breast cancer”, “imaging modalities”, and“treatment monitoring” and reviewed articles are from ۲۰۱۸ to ۲۰۲۳ and the search was limited to articlespublished in english. also, for select the most relevant references at first remove unrelated and duplicate titleswith reviewing titles and abstract. After checking the quality of the articles, the findings were entered in thechecklist. The initial search contain۲۳۵articles after evaluating titles and abstracts for select related articles,۲۹articles were selected. Eventually, after final screening for ensure about quality of references۷study wereselected.Results: Recurrence or metastases may be localized (in the breast) and may recur as distant metastases (intissues such as bone, liver, lungs or brain). The study showed that an increase in Ca۱۵-۳(a tumor marker formany types of cancer) at ۹–۳ and ۳–۰ months’ correlates with accurate positive PET/CT results and diseaserelapse. Elevated Ca۱۵-۳ could be a hint to the clinician to perform a PET/CT examination to detect diseaserelapse when the disease is more treatable. PET/CT sensitivity and specificity was higher than pet and ct scan,indicating a marginally increased diagnostic precision. Also, PET/CT to be more sensitive than whole body-MRI in detecting lymph node involvement. In addition, PET-CT detected more bone lesions than BS. As wellas, PET with ۱۸F-FLT enables investigators to quantify the proliferation fraction of tumors and has beenproposed as a better biomarker than FDG-PET for measuring response to therapy.Conclusion: These findings indicate that PET/CT is an accurate, sensitive and reliable modality for thescreening and detection of breast cancer recurrence. More prospective studies are needed to determine whetherthis technology could potentially replace conventional imaging tests used today to monitor breast cancerrecurrence.