Abstract:
Objective To investigate the prognostic value of 18F-fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG) PET/CT parameters in patients with diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) in their middle stage of chemotherapy.
Methods Clinical data and PET/CT imaging data of 112 DLBCL patients in the Fourth Hospital of Hebei Medical University from January 2011 to January 2020 after 3–4 cycles of chemotherapy were retrospectively analyzed, patients included 60 males and 52 females aged 16–79 (49.5±16.6) years. Then, 40% of the maximum standardized uptake value (SUVmax) was taken as the threshold to outline the region of interest (ROI) and subsequently obtain the SUVmax of lesion, total metabolic tumor volume (TMTV), and total of total lesion glycolysis (TTLG) of all lesions in the body. The sum of products of greatest diameter (SPD) of six target lesions were measured on a CT image. The optimal cut-off values of predicting the progress-free survival (PFS) and overall survival (OS) of the metabolic parameters and anatomical measurement parameters were calculated using the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve. The Log-rank test was used for univariate analysis. Kaplan-Meier method was used for the survival analysis. Cox proportional hazards regression model was used for the multivariate analysis of statistically significant prognostic factors obtained from the univariate analysis.
Results Among 112 patients, 25 (22.3%) disease developed DLBCL and 14 (12.5%) died from DLBCL during the follow-up period. The optimal cut-off values of the 18F-FDG PET/CT parameters for SUVmax, TMTV, TTLG, and SPD for predicting the PFS of patients with DLBCL were 1.75, 6.40 cm3, 9.30 g, and 3.53 cm2, respectively, with corresponding area under curve (AUC) of 0.712, 0.652, 0.680 and 0.728 (95% CI: 0.596–0.829, 0.518–0.787, 0.549–0.811 and 0.619–0.837; all P<0.05). Meanwhile, the optimal cut-off values for predicting OS were 3.75, 17.80 cm3, 19.05 g, and 5.67 cm2, respectively, with corresponding AUC of 0.727, 0.686, 0.727 and 0.757 (95% CI: 0.578–0.877, 0.512–0.861, 0.559–0.896 and 0.622–0.891; all P<0.05). The results of univariate analysis indicate that age, Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group (ECOG) score, International Prognostic Index (IPI) score, National Comprehensive Cancer Network-IPI score, Deauville score, SUVmax, TMTV, TTLG, and SPD were the influencing factors of PFS (χ2=5.152–22.998, all P<0.05) and OS (χ2=4.735–19.687, all P<0.05). Meanwhile, lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) level only influences OS (χ2=4.154, P<0.05) but not PFS (χ2=2.223, P>0.05). Then, the results of multivariate analysis indicate that age, ECOG score, and TTLG were the independent risk factors affecting the PFS of patients with DLBCL (HR=0.331, 0.262, and 0.281; 95% CI: 0.145–0.753, 0.113–0.605 and 0.119–0.666; all P<0.01), whereas LDH level and SPD were the independent risk factors affecting the OS patients with DLBCL (HR=0.594, 1.922; 95% CI: 0.360–0.979 and 1.123–3.290; all P<0.05).
Conclusions The 18F-FDG PET/CT parameters of SUVmax, TMTV, TTLG, and SPD have a good prognostic value for DLBCL patients in their middle stage of chemotherapy.