A Predictive Model for Lymph Node Involvement with Malignancy on PET/CT in Non-Small-Cell Lung Cancer.

Introduction: Accurate assessment of lymph node (LN) involvement with malignancy is critical to staging and management of non-small-cell lung cancer. The goal of this retrospective study was to determine the tumor and imaging characteristics independently associated with malignant involvement of LNs visualized on positron emission tomography/computed tomography (PET/CT).

Methods: From 2002 to 2011, 172 patients with newly diagnosed non-small-cell lung cancer underwent PET/CT within 31 days before LN biopsy.

Ratio of Lymph Node to Primary Tumor SUV on PET/CT Accurately Predicts Nodal Malignancy in Non-Small-Cell Lung Cancer.

Unlabelled: Thoracic lymph nodes with marginally elevated maximum standardized uptake value (SUVmax) on PET/CT a diagnostic challenge in staging non-small-cell lung cancer. We evaluated the ratio of lymph node to primary tumor SUVmax (SUVN/T) in predicting nodal malignancy among 132 sampled nodes from 85 patients both a primary tumor SUVmax > 2.5 and LN SUVmax 2.