Survival and central photopenia detected by fluorine-18 fluoro-deoxy-glucose positron emission tomography (FDG-PET) in patients with locoregional non-small cell lung cancer treated with radiotherapy

Abstract

Background Primary non-small cell lung cancer cavitation and central photopenia, detected by radiology and FDG-PET scanning respectively, are thought to be the result of tumor necrosis. Such regions may contain hypoxic but viable carcinoma cells which may be relatively radioresistant compared with fully oxygenated regions. We hypothesized that photopenic tumors treated with radiotherapy with or without chemotherapy would be associated with worse survival compared with tumors not showing central photopenia. Patients and methods The data were from a prospective trial (TROG 99-05) investigating the prognostic significance of primary tumor volume in patients receiving radical radiotherapy for lo..