Imaging of advanced neuroendocrine tumors with (18)F-FDOPA PET.

What Was Tested

Researchers studied Octreotide in this clinical trial publication.

Nuclear medicine plays an important role in the imaging of neuroendocrine tumors (NETs).

Somatostatin receptor scintigraphy (SRS) with (111)In-labeled somatostatin receptor analogs is a standard procedure for the detection and staging of NET.

Who Took Part

By PubMed's age tags, the people studied were adults, middle-aged adults, older adults and people over 80, both men and women.

Twenty-three patients with histologically verified NETs in advanced stages were consecutively enrolled in the study.

In patients with discrepancies between nuclear medicine and radiologic methods, follow-up investigations were performed by CT, MRI, and ultrasound.

How the Study Was Run

(18)F-FDOPA PET with attenuation correction was done 30 and 90 min after injection from the neck to the upper legs.

SRS was performed with (111)In-DOTA-D-Phe(1)-Tyr(3)-octreotide at 6 and 24 h.

All images were read without knowledge of the results of the other modalities.

In every patient, the following regions were evaluated separately: bones, mediastinum, lungs, liver, pancreas, and others, including the abdominal and supraclavicular lymph nodes, spleen, and soft- tissue lesions.

The findings were confirmed by clinical examination.

What Was Measured

Based on the ability of NETs to store biogenic amines, this study evaluated whether 6-(18)F-fluoro-L-DOPA ((18)F-FDOPA) is a suitable PET tracer for NETs.

PubMed files the paper under topics including Dihydroxyphenylalanine, Indium Radioisotopes, Neuroendocrine Tumors, Octreotide, Radiopharmaceuticals, Reproducibility of Results and Sensitivity and Specificity.

What This Means in Plain Language

This is a clinical trial of Octreotide.

The abstract goes on to report its results in about 6 sentences; this page does not restate them, so read the paper for the findings and their limits.

The publication is from 2004 (Journal of nuclear medicine : official publication, Society of Nuclear Medicine), a journal based in United States.

More context: the related Octreotide library page, all human trials.