Usefulness of the maximum standardized uptake value for the diagnosis and staging of patients with cervical cancer undergoing positron emission tomography/computed tomography

Cervical cancer recently has become more common among younger women in Japan. Diagnosing early-stage cancer is straightforward using cervical cytodiagnosis and histological diagnosis. However, postmenopausal endophytic cervical cancer and skip lesions in cervical adenocarcinoma are difficult to detect. We compared the maximum standardized uptake value (SUVmax) of 18F-fluorodeoxy-glucose positron emission tomography/computed tomography (PET/CT) for primary staging of cervical cancer and evaluated the relationship of the imaging findings to prognosis. This was a retrospective study of 38 patients with cervical cancer who underwent PET/CT. Patients were grouped according to disease stage, and the mean SUVmax, overall survival, and progression-free survival (PFS) were evaluated. The mean SUVmax was significantly different between patients with stage ≤I and ≥II diseases among those with squamous (P > .001) and glandular (P = .023) lesions. With an SUVmax of receiver operating characteristic curves as the optimal cutoff value, the log-rank test for PFS revealed a statistically significant difference between the 2 disease stages (P = .020 and P = .016, respectively). SUVmax is useful to differentiate between stage ≤I and ≥II cervical cancer. SUVmax may be useful for the prognostic evaluation of disease recurrence in patients with cervical cancer.