Published in:
01-08-2012
Colorectal cancer: prognostic role of 18F-FDG-PET/CT
Authors:
Gaia Grassetto, Carlo Capirci, Maria Cristina Marzola, Lucia Rampin, Sotirios Chondrogiannis, Alessandra Musto, Giorgio Crepaldi, Anna Maria Minicozzi, Arianna Massaro, Domenico Rubello
Published in:
Abdominal Radiology
|
Issue 4/2012
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Excerpt
Colorectal cancer is one of the main causes of death in Western countries and an incidence of 800,000 new cases per year is estimated world-wide [
1]. In the United States, colorectal cancer is the third most common malignancy among men and women and approximately 50,000 patients per year die from this disease [
2]. Nevertheless, the incidence and death rates have decreased over the last two decades due to the increase of screening procedures, with a greater discovery of pre-malignant lesions, and due to the improvement in therapy [
2,
3]. About 70–80% of patients are treated with curative intent, mainly by surgery, but also neo-adjuvant and adjuvant chemo-radiation therapy may be used to improve prognosis. The overall 5-year survival is approximately 50% but it heavily depends on the stage of disease at presentation: the survival can vary from 83 to 90% for early stages to 3% for advanced disease [
2,
4,
5]. …
