Can metabolic tumor parameters on primary staging 18 F-FDG PET/CT aid in risk stratification of primary central nervous system lymphomas for patient management as a prognostic model?

OBJECTIVE: Primary central nervous system (CNS) lymphoma is an aggressive and fatal extranodal non-Hodgkin lymphoma jailed in CNS at initial diagnosis. Its prognosis is poor and the disease has a fatal outcome when compared with systemic non-Hodgkin lymphoma. A few baseline risk stratification scoring systems have been suggested to estimate the prognosis mainly based on serum lactate dehydrogenase level,age, Karnofsky performance score, involvement of deep brain structures and cerebrospinal fluid protein concentration. 18 F-FDG PET/CT has a high prognostic value with respect to overall survival and disease-free survival in many cancers and lymphomas. We aimed to investigate metabolic tumor indexes on primary staging 18 F-FDG PET/CT as prognostic markers in primary CNS lymphoma.

MATERIAL AND METHODS: Fourteen patients with primary CNS diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (stage i) were enrolled in this retrospective cohort study. Primary staging 18 F-FDG PET/CT was performed and quantitative parameters like maximum standardized uptake value, average standardized uptake value, metabolic tumor volume and total lesion glycolysis (TLG) were calculated for all patients before the treatment. Cox regression models were performed to determine their relation with survival time.

RESULTS: In the evaluation of all potential risk factors impacting recurrence/metastases (age, sex, serum lactate dehydrogenase, involvement of deep brain structures, maximum standardized uptake value, average standardized uptake value, metabolic tumor volume, and TLG) with univariate analysis, TLG remained statistically significant (P=.02).

CONCLUSION: Metabolic tumor parameters are useful in prognosis estimation of primary CNS lymphomas, especially TLG, which is the most important one and may play a role in patient management.