Reliable Diagnosis of Pancreatic Adenocarcinoma with 18-F-2-FDG-Positron-Emission-Tomography (PET)

Among gastrointestinal cancers, pancreatic carcinoma is the one with the worst prognosis: less than 20% of affected patients survive the first year after diagnosis. Positron-emission-tomography (PET) has recently evolved as a non-invasive imaging method for tissue characterisation based rather on specific tissue metabolism than on imaging tissue mass, contour, echogeneity or X-ray absorption like CT and ultrasound. The glucose analogue F-18-2-fluorodeoxyglucose (18-F-2-FDG) was used to measure overall tumoral glucose utilisation with PET in various malignancies [1,2,3,4,5]. A marked increase in expression of genes and respective gene products regulating glucose transport and glycolysis has been demonstrated in pancreatic adenocarcinoma. Based on these findings increased glucose utilisation was expected to discriminate benign from malignant pancreatic lesions.