Correlation of (18F) FDG PET/CT Parameters with Haematological Parameters in Esophageal Cancers and the Effect of These Parameters on Survival

Abstract

Objective: In the present study, we aimed to investigate the relationship between metabolic (SUVmax) and volume-based (18F)FDG PET/CT parameters (metabolic tumour volume (MTV) and total lesion glycolysis (TLG)) and haematological parameters (neutrophil, lymphocyte, platelet,mean platelet volume(MPV) , neutrophil-lymphocyte ratio (NLR) and platelet-lymphocyte ratio (TLR)) with survival, and whether haematological parameters are correlated with metabolic and volume-based PET parameters.
 Method: We included a total of 55 patients who underwent (18F)FDG PET/CT in our nuclear medicine clinic between January 2017 and December 2018 with a diagnosis of esophageal squamous cell carcinoma, had no distant metastasis, either had or did not have regional lymph node metastasis, whose imaging and laboratory data could be retrospectively accessed, who did not undergo an operation before imaging, did not receive chemo-radiotherapy.
 Results: In multivariate regression analysis, we found esophageal MTV (OR 2.6; 95% CI 1.04–6.57, p: 0.041) and esophageal TLG (OR 2.7; 95% CI 1.2–6.2, p: 0.022) values to be independent variables in terms of survival. While we observed a negative correlation between PLR and esophageal MTV and TLG (p values were respectively p: 0.021, p: 0.03), we observed a positive correlation between lymphocyte counts and esophageal MTV and TLG (p values were p: 0.004, p: 0.001, respectively). We detected a positive correlation between the size and SUVmax of lymph node metastasis, on the one hand, and both neutrophil counts and NLR on the other.
 Conclusion: We determined MTV and TLG values, which are volume-based metabolic PET parameters, to be independent prognostic factors for survival. MTV and TLG had a negative correlation with PLR and a positive correlation with lymphocyte counts.