Despite its promise as a noninvasive method for diagnosing cancers, positron emission tomography (PET) is not sensitive enough for evaluating lymph node status in patients with breast cancer and should not serve as an alternative to sentinel lymph node biopsy, researchers conclude in a commentary published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

Ulrich Guller, M.D., of the University of Basel in Switzerland, and Markus Zuber, M.D., of the Kantonsspital Olten in Switzerland, and colleagues reviewed the current literature on the sensitivity of PET scanning in detecting lymph node metastases, compared with sentinel lymph node biopsy, and determined that PET does not have enough spatial resolution to detect early lymph node metastases in patients with breast cancer. They conclude that, at least for now, PET should not serve as an alternative to sentinel lymph node biopsy.

However, the authors acknowledge that new detection materials may be able to improve the sensitivity of PET and eventually allow it to replace invasive procedures in the evaluation of the nodal status of patients with breast cancer.

SOURCE:
Journal of the National Cancer Institute, July 16, 2003