Abstract
1290
Objectives: Methionine, which reflects the intracellualr metabolism of the amino acid , is always taken up avidly by gliomas. The aim of this study was to explore whether 11C-Methionine may help with brainstem gliomas preoperative grading and predicting the patients’ survival.
Methods: 45 consecutive patients with suspected newly developed brainstem gliomas by MRI underwent 11C-Methionine preoperatively and biopsy. The final diagnosis was based on tissue analysis. Semi-quantitative analysis using maximum standardized uptake value(SUVmax)and maximum tumor-to-normal brain ratios (TBRmax) were analyzed with grading. The patients were followed up and the HGGs patients’ PFS and OS survival data were analyzed by Cox regression method.
Results: 16 low-grade gliomas (LGGs) and 29 high-grade gliomas (HGGs) were enrolled, including 7 GBM. Both 11C-Methionine PET/CT parameters showed the ability to differentiate between LGGs and HGGs (p=0.02 and p=0.014, for SUVmax and TBRmax separately).Both SUVmax and TBRmax is corelated to the tumor grading(r=0.64 and 0.73,p=0.000).Till now, the 29 HGGs tumors’ SUVmax and TBRmax, whether to receive standard chemoradiotherapy were not correlated to the PFS and OS.
Conclusion: 11C-Methionine PET/CT imaging is a noninvasive modality that is useful in improving preoperative grading for brainstem gliomas. However, whether it could be a prognostic marker in brainstem HGGs patients should be thoroughly analyzed after long enough analysis in prospective cohort.