The laterality of the primary and metastatic lymphoma, lung and breast cancers determined on PET/BT at nuclear medicine department of cukurova university medical faculty and the relationship with F18-FDG uptake

Objective: The internal anatomy of the human body displays marked asymmetry. In this regard, the malignancies may have similar tendency of laterality associated with the asymmetry of the human body. In this study, it was aimed to assess the correlation with metabolism and laterality by comparing the SUVmaxs of the lesions of lymphoma, lung and breast cancers imagined on PET/BT, retrospectively. Therefore, the laterality tendency of the tumors was appreciated not only anatomically but also metabolically.Material and methods: 75 lymphomas, 71 lung cancers and 38 breast cancers, totally 184 patients were examined retrospectively. The PET/CT images were reviewed and the SUVmaxs of the primary tumors and the lesions were recorded.Results: In this study, it was observerd that in lung cancers, the primary tumors and lesions have a tendency to locate on the right side of the body; the lymphomas have a tendency to be on the left side of the body. It was determined that in breast cancer, the SUVmaxs measured on the left side was higher than those on the right side (p = 0,01).Conclusion: Regarding higher SUVmax values in the left side of patients with breast cancer, it may be stated that there is an association between location of tumors and SUVmax values in cancers. Therefore, further studies with a large number of patients may be important in order to expose the correlation with the prognosis and the asymmetric metabolical tendencies in cancers.Key Words: Laterality, Lung cancer, Breast cancer, Lymphoma, FDG-PET, SUVmax