Hodgkin's disease. Prognostic value of Gallium-67 scintigraphy

摘要

Aim. The aim of this study is to assess the clinical impact of gallium-67 scintigraphy, before and after treatment, in patients with Hodgkin's disease, and to compare the overall survival between the patients whose gallium studies after treatment were negative and those whose studies remained positive. Methods. We have studied 75 patients (40 women, 35 men) with Hodgkin's disease. All the patients underwent ~(67)Ga scintigraphy at the moment of the diagnosis (basal study) and in the case that basal study was positive (abnormal hyper-uptake focus) we performed follow-up studies after the treatment. We have calculated the overall survival among patients whose studies after treatment were negative (1st group) and those whose studies remained positive (2nd group) and between patients whose studies were negative at diagnosis (3rd group). Results. Gallium scintigraphy was positive at diagnosis in 47 patients (62.6%). In 39 of them we were able to perform the follow-up study after treatment. The follow-up study was negative in 31 patients while in 8 patients the gallium scintigraphy remained positive. The overall survival was significantly higher (p<0.001) in the 1st group compared with the 2nd group. The overall survival was higher in the 1st group compared with the 3rd but statistic significance level was not reached. Conclusion. Our data suggest that: 1) in Hodgkin's disease ~(67)Ga scintigraphy is useful to establish the diagnosis of complete remission; 2) if the gallium scan remains positive after treatment, the prognosis of patients is worse than the prognosis of patients with a negative scan.