Background: The prognosis of patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) is important, as patients with resectable disease and poor prognostic variables might benefit from neoadjuvant therapy. The goal of this study is to evaluate SUVmax, SUVmax ratio, CT volume (CTvol), metabolic tumour volume (MTV) and total lesion glycolisis (TLG) as survival prognostic markers. In addition, we defined two variables; MTV x SUVmax (MTVmax) and CTvol x SUVmax (CTvolmax) and assessed whether they can be used as prognostic markers.
Methods: Patients with stage I-II NSCLC who underwent 18 F FDG PET/CT and surgery were evaluated. Cox proportional-hazard model was used to determine the association between variables and survival. Similar analysis was performed in cases with no lymph node (LN) involvement.
Results: One hundred and eighty-one patients were included (at the end of the study, 140 patients were alive). SUVmax with a cut-off value of 8.2 was significant survival prognostic factor regardless of LN involvement (P = 0.012). In cases with no LN involvement, SUVmax and CTvol (≥7.1 ml) were significant survival prognostic factors with P = 0.004 and 0.03, respectively.
Conclusions: SUVmax may be a useful prognostic variable in stage I-II NSCLC while morphologic tumour volume might be useful in cases with no lymph node involvement.
Key points: • Identifying variables that predict the prognosis of patients with NSCLC is important. • SUVmax in primary lung tumour is a useful independent prognostic variable. • (CTvol) is an independent prognostic variable if no lymph nodes are involved.
Keywords: 18 F FDG PET/CT; CT volume; Metabolic tumour volume; Non small cell lung cancer; Total lesion glycolysis.