Designing and Developing PET-Based Precision Model in Thyroid Carcinoma

This communication enumerates the current uses and potential areas where PET could be clinically utilized for developing “precision medicine” type model in thyroid carcinoma. (1) In routine clinics, PET imaging (with fluorodeoxyglucose [FDG]) is utilized to investigate patients of differentiated thyroid carcinoma (DTC) with high thyroglobulin and negative iodine scintigraphy (TENIS) and in medullary carcinoma thyr oid (MCT) when the tumor markers (eg, calcitonin and carcino embryonic antigen [CEA]) are raised postoperatively (PET with FDG, 68Ga-DOTA-NOC/TATE, FDOPA). Both are examples of management personalization, where PET-computed tomography (CT) has been found substantially useful in detecting sites of me tastatic disease and making decision with regard to feasibility and planning of surgery on an individual patient basis. (2) The next important area of management personalization is in patients of TENIS with metastatic disease not amenable to surgery through examining FDG-PET findings in tandem with radio iodine scan and 68Ga-DOTA-TATE/NOC PET/CT. Heterogeneous behavior of the metastatic lesions is frequently observed clinically: analyzing the findings of three studies aids in sub-segmenting patients into subgroups and thereby deciding upon the best approach (observation with LT4 suppression vs PRRT vs tyrosine kinase inhibitors) that could be individualized in a given case. (3) In metastatic/inoperable MCT, 68Ga-DOTA-TATE/NOC PET-CT helps in deciding upon feasibility...
Source: PET Clinics - Category: Radiology Authors: Source Type: research