Clinically important detection of infection as an 'incidental' finding during cancer staging using FDG-PET/CT

Abstract

Background: FDG-PET/CT is widely used in the management of a variety of malignancies with excellent overall accuracy, despite the potential for false positive results related to infection and inflammation. Aim: As cancer patients can develop clinically inapparent infections, we evaluated the prevalence and nature of incidental findings reported to be suggestive of infections that had been identified during clinical cancer staging with FDG-PET/CT. Methods: The study involved a retrospective analysis of 60 patients managed primarily at our facility from a total of 121 cases identified as having possible infection on clinical reporting of more than 4500 cancer staging investigations performed d..