A 28-year-old immigrant presented with a 2-week history of throbbing headache. Contrast-enhanced computed tomography (CECT) examination showed multiple brain abscesses. He is a known defaulter from miliary tuberculosis treatment. 18F-FDG PET/CT demonstrated multiple visually high metabolic activity lesions disseminated in the brain, thorax, abdomen and pelvis [1]. The maximum standard uptake values (SUVmax) of these lesions were substantially > 3.0 and comparable to the uptake of FDG-avid malignant lesions. These findings demand careful image interpretation implicating false-positive results [2, 3]. Our case illustrates the usefulness of 18F-FDG PET/CT in mapping active tuberculous lesions which can be used for baseline study [4].
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Acknowledgement
This paper was supported by International Atomic Energy Agency and Research University Grant UPM in 2008.
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Open Access This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0), which permits any noncommercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and source are credited.
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Nordin, A.J., Rossetti, C. & Rahim, N.A. Disseminated tuberculosis infection: a ‘super’ 18F-FDG PET/CT appearance. Eur J Nucl Med Mol Imaging 36, 882 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00259-009-1107-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00259-009-1107-z
Keywords
- Tuberculosis
- Malignant Lesion
- Standard Uptake
- Image Interpretation
- Tuberculosis Treatment