Abstract
Immunotherapy has been recently introduced in clinical practice for the treatment of lung cancer. The current experiences have demonstrated a significant advantage in terms of overall survival, by using these new approaches. However, new clinical trials are now available for testing the utility of immunotherapy in other thoracic tumors, like thymoma, pleural mesothelioma, and breast cancer. To date, contrast-enhanced computed tomography (ceCT) represents the imaging of choice for monitoring the response to therapy in patients treated with immune check point inhibitors, although its performance is reduced by the appearance of pseudoprogression or hyperprogression. Moreover, conventional anatomical criteria for the assessment of response to therapy are not optimal for the immune check point inhibitors. 18F-Fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography (PET/CT) has been widely used in lung cancer and for the evaluation of an early response to treatment, but its role during immunotherapy is still debated. However, its advantages should be addressed in thorax cancer, both during and after immunotherapy. In this chapter, we have made a collation of 18F-FDG PET/CT scans of patients affected by breast cancer and lung cancer, scheduled for immunotherapy, or of those evaluated after the end of treatment with immune check point inhibitors.
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Evangelista, L., Pasello, G. (2020). Lung Cancer: 18F-FDG PET/CT for Response Assessment of Lung Following Immunotherapy. In: Lopci, E., Fanti, S. (eds) Atlas of Response to Immunotherapy. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31113-1_4
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