RESEARCH ARTICLE


Differentiation of Tuberculous and Pyogenic Spondylitis Using Double Phase F-18 FDG PET



Seong-Jang Kim1, 2, Jung Sub Lee*, 2, 3, Kuen Tak Suh2, 3, In-Ju Kim1, 2, Yong-Ki Kim1, 2
1 Department of Nuclear Medicine, Pusan National University Hospital, Busan, Republic of Korea 602-739
2 Medical Research Institute, Pusan National University Hospital, Busan, Republic of Korea 602-739
3 Department of Orthopaedic Surgery and Medical Research Institute, Pusan National University Hospital, Busan, Republic of Korea

Article Information


Identifiers and Pagination:

Year: 2008
Volume: 2
First Page: 1
Last Page: 6
Publisher Id: TOMIJ-2-1

Article History:

Received Date: 2/11/2007
Revision Received Date: 27/11/2007
Acceptance Date: 11/12/2007
Electronic publication date: 3/1/2008
Collection year: 2008

© 2007 Kim et al.

open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

* Address correspondence to this author at the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery and Medical Research Institute, Pusan National University Hospital, Busan, Republic of Korea; Tel: 82-51-240-7982; E-mail: jungsublee@pusan.ac.kr


Abstract

To assess the usefulness of double phase F-18 FDG PET in pyogenic spondylitis (PS) and tuberculous spondylitis (TS). Also, to investigate whether double phase F-18 FDG PET could improve the diagnostic accuracy for discrimination of PS from TS.

Methods:

Double phase F-18 FDG PET/CT was performed in a consecutive 23 patients (9 men, 14 women; mean age, 58.5±17.9 years, range, 19∼81 years) suspected having spondylitis. PET/CT imaging was performed 60 and 120 minutes after injection of F-18 FDG.

Results:

The SUVmax1 of TS and PS showed no statistical differences (TS, 4.53±1.77; PS, 4.5±1.9, p=0.9515). The SUVmax2 also showed no statistical differences between two groups (TS, 5.17􀀁1.95; PS, 5.3±2.21, p=0.9321). The mean SUV of early and delayed F-18 FDG PET images revealed no statistical differences between TS and PS. The %􀀁SUVmax and %􀀁SUVmean have no statistical differences between TS and PS (%±SUVmax, TS, 15.07±6.57%, PS, 18.79􀀁10.48%, p=0.5109; %±SUVmean, TS, 16.49±9.1%, PS, 16.88±6.72%, p=0.6524). Also, none of these quantitative indices could differentiate the TS from PS. Furthermore, none of these quantitative indices could predict the presence of TS.

Conclusion:

Based on the presented data, the quantitative indices of double phase F-18 FDG PET could not differentiate TS from PS despite of high sensitivity for the detection of spondylitis of F-18 FDG PET.

Keywords: Double phase, F-18 FDG PET, Spondylitis.