Prognostic Value of Metabolic Tumor Parameters in Pretreatment (18)F-Fluorodeoxyglucose Positron Emission Tomography–Computed Tomography Scan in Advanced Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer

OBJECTIVE: This retrospective study aimed to investigate whether metabolic parameters of primary tumour i.e. maximum standardized uptake value (SUVmax), metabolic tumour volume (MTV) and total lesion glycolysis (TLG) predict overall survival (OS) in patients with advanced stage non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). MATERIALS AND METHODS: SUVmax, MTV and TLG of the primary tumors were measured in staging (18)F-Fluorodeoxyglucose Positron emission tomography- Computed tomography ((18)F-FDG PET/CT) scan of 97 NSCLC patients by gradient based tumour segmentation method. Prognostic ability was assessed for overall survival (OS) of the patients. RESULT: The median follow-up period of the study was 15.84 months (range 1.3 to 47.97 months).The estimated median OS was 11.29 months (range 1.37 to 38.63 months). Total of 40 (41.24%) patients had progressive disease and 21 (21.65%) patients died during the follow up period. Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) analysis showed that the area under the curve (AUC) for MTV was significant (area = 0.652 ± 0.065; 95% CI = 0.548 – 0.746; P = 0.020). Kaplan-Meier survival curves showed that the OS differences between the groups of patients who were dichotomized by the median value of MTV (38.76 ml, P = 0.0150) and TLG (301.69 ml, P = 0.0046) were significant. MTV (hazard ratio = 4.524; 95% CI = 1.244 – 16.451; P = 0.022) was found to be an independent prognostic factor for OS in multivariate analysis. CONCLUSION: MTV of the primary tumor is a potential prognostic parameter for OS in our population of advanced NSCLC patients independent of other risk factors.