201Tl-SPECT in low-grade gliomas: diagnostic accuracy in differential diagnosis between tumour recurrence and radionecrosis

Abstract

(201)Tl-SPECT has adequate diagnostic accuracy to be part of routine algorithms in the follow-up of patients with low-grade glioma suspected of tumour recurrence, as an alternative to neuro-anatomical procedures and not solely as a complementary test.

Systematic review of the diagnostic accuracy of 201Tl single photon emission computed tomography in the detection of recurrent glioma

“…In the interpretation of our results, however, the limited methodological quality of the reviewed studies, and the fact that our findings are based on unpooled data relating to a relatively small patient sample, should be kept in mind. These results are in line with a recent study on the diagnostic accuracy of 201 Tl SPECT in the detection of tumour recurrence in patients treated with radiotherapy for low-grade glioma, although a major drawback of this study is the fact that histopathological confirmation was obtained only in a proportion of patients [35]. Future studies are warranted to further explore the diagnostic potential of 201 Tl SPECT, and to determine optimum thresholds for the detection of tumour recurrence in patients with previous radiotherapy for supratentorial glioma.…”

Differentiation of tumor recurrence from radiation necrosis in high-grade gliomas using 201Tl-SPECT

“…37 This problem potentially can be overcome by the recent advances in SPECT-CT fusion imaging, 38 which has become available recently in our institution. However, the numbers of SPECT-CT studies acquired are too small to make any meaningful analysis.…”

Performance of SPECT in the differential diagnosis of glioma recurrence from radiation necrosis

“…We also performed several subgroup analyses by radiotracer. The pooled SEN, SPE, LR+, and LRÀ derived from 477 scans with 201 Tl SPECT in 12 studies [10,11,22,24,26,30,32,35,38,[40][41][42] other tracers was impossible because of limited data. There was no significant difference in the AUC of the three groups using different tracers (P interaction > 0.05).…”