This article is more than 5 years old. Information may no longer be current.
Somatostatin imaging added no diagnostic information to CT, MRI for neuroendocrine tumors
Click Here to Manage Email Alerts
Somatostatin receptor imaging does not appear to add to modern CT and MRI in detecting soft tissue involvement of neuroendocrine tumors.
Diane Reidy, MD, a medical oncologist with the gastrointestinal oncology service at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, was part of the team that conducted a retrospective review to compare somatostatin scintigraphy imaging with Indium111-octreotide (OctreoScan, Mallinckrodt) with CT or MRI. Based on the results, the researchers concluded that somatostatin imaging did not appear to be a useful adjunct to defining extent of soft tissue disease in neuroendocrine tumors.
“In this review, reports from octreotide scan as well as CT or MRI showed that CT or MRI picks up more soft tissue lesions,” Reidy said at the 2010 Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium.
Reidy added that octreotide scanning of low-grade tumors detected asymptomatic bone lesions in four patients that were not reported on CT or MRI. However, those tumors were in the setting of widespread disseminated soft tissue metastatic disease.
The researchers evaluated electronic medical records for 91 patients treated for neuroendocrine tumors at Sloan-Kettering from January 2003 to June 2008. Sixteen patients had functional tumors and 81 had metastatic disease.
Reidy said somatostatin imaging with Indium-111 returned negative results for 18 who had clear metastatic disease on CT or MRI. Additionally, somatostatin imaging missed hepatic metastases in 14 patients, which was the sole site of metastases for six patients.
Six patients underwent both serialsomatostatin imaging and serial CT or MRI. Reidy said somatostatin imaging did not detect additional metastatic disease compared with the other two scans. Among the 63 patients who had positive octreotide scans, 25% had at least one lesion detected by CT or MRI that the octreotide scanning missed. “In summary, our data do not support the idea that routine use of somatostatin scintigraphy would increase the pick-up of soft tissue lesions over what we would expect to find with good quality MRI or contrast-enhanced CT alone.,” she said.
Reidy DL. #125. Presented at: 2010 Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium; Jan. 22-24, 2010; Orlando, Fla.