BACKGROUND: In lung cancer, staging is necessary to give the best treatment to the patient and to estimate the best prognosis. The aim of this study was to compare the pathology results of the lung masses and mediastinal lymph nodes and to evaluate the sensitivity and specificity values of positron emission tomography.computerized tomography (PET.CT) and to determine the maximal threshold of maximum standardized uptake volume (SUVmax).
MATERIALS AND METHODS: We retrospectively evaluated the PET.CT SUVmax values and pathology results of the patients who had a mass, mediastinal lymph node, or scalene lymph node in our patients between 2016 and 2018.
RESULTS: Fifty.one people and 75 pathology materials were included in our study. We used the receiver operating characteristic curve analysis to determine the cutoff value for SUVmax value and calculated the cutoff value as 6.65. In our study, the sensitivity and specificity were calculated as 63% and 71%, respectively. We calculated the positive predictive value as 73.5% and the negative predictive value as 61%.
CONCLUSION: As a result, considering the common inflammatory and granulomatous diseases seen in our country, we concluded that benign diseases should be considered before malignancy in SUVmax value below 6.6. We continue to add new patients and new data toour study to find the most appropriate threshold of SUVmax value for the health values of our country.