The rising PET: the increasing use of choline PET/CT in prostate cancer

Excerpt

The paper by Castellucci et al. [1] which appears in this issue of the journal is the last contribution, just in terms of time, dealing with the use of choline PET in the evaluation of biochemical relapse from prostate cancer. The paper adds an important voice in the discussion on the management of prostate cancer patients after prostatectomy. In particular, the authors aimed at studying the clinical utility of ¹¹C-choline PET/CT in patients with a “mild” serum prostate-specific antigen (PSA) increase after radical prostatectomy. Although “mild” is not a numeric value, they set the PSA cutoff at less than 1.5 ng/ml. One hundred and two patients were enrolled with an increase of serum PSA during follow-up ranging from 0.2 to 1.5 ng/ml. Choline PET/CT was used as the first diagnostic procedure and results were compared to pathology or a 12-month follow-up. Data from PSA kinetics, such as doubling time and velocity, were also evaluated. …