Reporting Post-Therapy Scans

Abstract

Quantification of tumor burden by medical imaging is often used in our daily clinical practice to assess the effectiveness of various anticancer therapies in soft-tissue tumors. Computed tomography (CT) represents the most common technique employed for the assessment of response to treatment. Response Evaluation Criteria in Solid Tumors (RECIST) version 1.1 (RECIST1.1) is currently adopted as tumor response criteria in most trials of solid tumors. Positron emission tomography (PET) has been widely used in clinical practice for staging and restaging patients with cancer using different radiopharmaceutical agents. However, in the last years, a considerable amount of data has been published about its role in evaluating responses to therapies, both local and systemic ones.Similarly, other radiopharmaceuticals such as 18F/11C-Choline, 68Ga-PSMA, and 68Ga-DOTATOC help evaluate response to therapy. The chapter aims to suggest the standard practices for assessing response to treatment using PET/CT. More emphasis will be given to FDG, being a universal radiopharmaceutical agent used in routine clinical practice.