Retrospective Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2022. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Clin Cases. Dec 6, 2022; 10(34): 12532-12542
Published online Dec 6, 2022. doi: 10.12998/wjcc.v10.i34.12532
Significance of incidental focal fluorine-18 fluorodeoxyglucose uptake in colon/rectum, thyroid, and prostate: With a brief literature review
Haejun Lee, Kyung-Hoon Hwang
Haejun Lee, Kyung-Hoon Hwang, Department of Nuclear Medicine, Gachon University College of Medicine, Gil Medical Center, Incheon 21565, South Korea
Author contributions: Lee H and Hwang KH contributed to this work, designed the research study, performed the research, analyzed the data, and wrote the manuscript; Lee H contributed analytic tools; All authors have read and approved the final manuscript.
Institutional review board statement: The study was reviewed and approved by the Institutional Review Board at our institution.
Informed consent statement: The requirement for informed consent was waived by the Institutional Review Board at our institution.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors declare that they have no conflicting interests.
Data sharing statement: The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author, [Hwang KH], upon reasonable request.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Kyung-Hoon Hwang, MD, PhD, Professor, Nuclear Medicine, Gachon University College of Medicine, Gil Medical Center, Namdong-daero 774beon-gil, Namdong-gu, Incheon 21565, South Korea. forrest88@hanmail.net
Received: June 17, 2022
Peer-review started: June 17, 2022
First decision: July 29, 2022
Revised: August 10, 2022
Accepted: November 8, 2022
Article in press: November 8, 2022
Published online: December 6, 2022
Processing time: 168 Days and 7.2 Hours
Core Tip

Core Tip: Unexpectedly identified uptake on fluorine-18 fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography/computed tomography (F-18 FDG PET/CT) is not a rare finding. Among the uptakes, focal uptake may have clinical implications by harboring malignant lesions. In this study, the clinical significance of the incidentally identified focal FDG uptake in the colon/rectum, thyroid, and prostate was investigated with the malignancy rate, comparison of PET parameters, and receiver operating characteristic curve. Overall, approximately up to 60% were malignancies (including premalignancy) for the regions and SUVmax was a superior PET parameter in discrimination between malignant/premalignant and benign lesions. The findings should lead physicians to conduct further investigations more confidently without ignoring the focal uptake.