The potential of positron emission tomography/computerized tomography (PET/CT) scanning as a detector of high-risk patients with oral infection during preoperative staging

摘要

Objective. It is sometimes difficult to determine during the preoperative period whether patients have oral infections; these patients need treatment to prevent oral infectionerelated complications from arising during medical therapies, such as cancer therapy and surgery. One of the reasons for this difficulty is that basic medical tests do not identify oral infections, including periodontitis and periapical periodontitis. In this report, we investigated the potential of positron emission tomography/ computerized tomography (PET/CT) as a diagnostic tool in these patients.