Relationships between SUVmax of lung adenocarcinoma and different T stages, histological grades and pathological subtypes: a retrospective cohort study in China

OBJECTIVES: Cancer cell has aberrant metabolism. The purpose of this study aimed to investigate relationships between maximum standard uptake value (SUVmax）of (18)fluoro-2-deoxy-d-glucose and T stages, histological grades and pathological subtypes of lung adenocarcinoma. DESIGN: Retrospective cohort study, employing the Kruskal-Wallis, Bonferroni-Dunn and Mann-Whitney tests to compare SUVmax of different T stages, histological grades and pathological subtypes of lung adenocarcinoma. SETTING: The outpatients who had aberrant positron emission tomography/CT (PET/CT) images in chest were enrolled this study from August 2016 to November 2018 in Shanghai, China. PARTICIPANT: Initial 11 270 patients with suspected lung cancer who underwent PET/CT examinations were surveyed. A total of 1454 patients who were diagnosed as lung adenocarcinoma by pathologist were included in this project. PRIMARY OUTCOME MEASURES: SUVmax value at different tumour-node-metastasis stages of lung adenocarcinoma before surgery. RESULTS: The mean SUVmax of patients with lung adenocarcinoma was significantly elevated with the increase in T stages. There were significant evident differences in SUVmax among T1a–T1c (p<0.05). However, after the staging of patients was more than T1 stage, SUVmax of T2a, T2b, T2 visceral pleural invasion, T3 and T4 had not dramatic changes. SUVmax value of lung adenocarcinoma in the same T stage group was the highest in patients with the high grade of malignancy and solid-predominant invasive adenocarcinoma. CONCLUSIONS: SUVmax value was significantly associated with T stages, grades of malignancy and pathological subtypes of lung adenocarcinoma.