68Ga-DOTATATE-PET shows promise for diagnosis of recurrent or persistent medullary thyroid cancer: A systematic review.

BACKGROUND:Many patients with Medullary Thyroid Cancer (MTC) will have persistent or recurrent disease after surgery requiring lifelong surveillance with imaging and tumor markers. The objective of this study is to evaluate the efficacy of 68Ga-DOTATATE-PET (or 68Ga labelled equivalent radiopharmaceutical) versus 18F-FDG-PET for detecting persistent and/or metastatic recurrent MTC. METHODS:Relevant studies were identified by conducting searches in Embase and PubMed and five studies were included in the final review. RESULTS:Five studies investigated per-patient sensitivity of 18F-FDG-PET and 68Ga-DOTATATE-PET in MTC patients. Four studies investigated the correlation between calcitonin and number of lesions detected by 18F-FDG-PET and 68Ga-DOTATATE-PET, and three investigated the correlation between CEA and number of lesions detected by 18F-FDG-PET and 68Ga-DOTATATE-PET. There was no significant difference in number of lesions detected by 18F-FDG -PET compared with 68Ga-DOTATATE-PET. CONCLUSIONS:When compared directly to 18F-FDG-PET, there is a general trend towards favoring 68Ga-DOTATATE-PET in per-patient sensitivities, and incidence of lesion detection.