RT Journal Article SR Electronic T1 18F-FMT Uptake Seen Within Primary Cancer on PET Helps Predict Outcome of Non–Small Cell Lung Cancer JF Journal of Nuclear Medicine JO J Nucl Med FD Society of Nuclear Medicine SP 1770 OP 1776 DO 10.2967/jnumed.109.066837 VO 50 IS 11 A1 Kyoichi Kaira A1 Noboru Oriuchi A1 Kimihiro Shimizu A1 Hideyuki Tominaga A1 Noriko Yanagitani A1 Noriaki Sunaga A1 Tamotsu Ishizuka A1 Yoshikatsu Kanai A1 Masatomo Mori A1 Keigo Endo YR 2009 UL http://jnm.snmjournals.org/content/50/11/1770.abstract AB L-[3-18F]-α-methyl tyrosine (18F-FMT) is an amino-acid tracer for PET imaging. We evaluated the prognostic significance of 18F-FMT PET in patients with non–small cell lung cancer. Methods: Ninety-eight patients (80 men and 18 women; age range, 42–82 y; median age, 69 y) with stage I–IV non–small cell lung cancer were enrolled in this study. They included 57 with adenocarcinoma, 31 with squamous cell carcinoma, 5 with large cell carcinoma, and 5 with other conditions. The median follow-up duration was 17.0 mo. A pair of PET studies with 18F-FMT and 18F-FDG was performed, and tracer uptake by the primary tumor was evaluated using the maximal standardized uptake value (SUVmax). Overall survival and disease-free survival were calculated by the Kaplan–Meier method. The prognostic significance was assessed by univariate and multivariate analyses. Results: The best discriminative SUVmax cutoffs for 18F-FMT and 18F-FDG in the primary tumors were 1.6 and 11, respectively. In the univariate analysis, a high SUVmax was significant in predicting poor overall survival for 18F-FMT (P = 0.0129) and 18F-FDG PET (P = 0.0481). According to histologic types, 18F-FMT and 18F-FDG uptake were a stronger prognostic predictor in adenocarcinoma than in nonadenocarcinomatous disease. Patients with a high SUVmax for 18F-FMT showed significantly worse disease-free survival rates than those with a low SUVmax, and multivariate analysis confirmed that a high SUVmax for 18F-FMT was an independent and significant factor in predicting a poor prognosis in patients with adenocarcinoma (P = 0.0191). Conclusion: Uptake of 18F-FMT in primary tumors was an independent prognostic factor in patients with pulmonary adenocarcinoma.