TY - JOUR T1 - Use of Pre-treatment <sup>18</sup>F-FAMT PET to Predict Patient Survival in Squamous Cell Carcinoma of the Esophagus Treated by Curative Surgery JF - Anticancer Research JO - Anticancer Res SP - 3623 LP - 3628 VL - 34 IS - 7 AU - MAKOTO SOHDA AU - MAKOTO SAKAI AU - HIROAKI HONJYO AU - KEIGO HARA AU - DAIGO OZAWA AU - SHIGEMASA SUZUKI AU - NARITAKA TANAKA AU - TAKEHIKO YOKOBORI AU - TATSUYA MIYAZAKI AU - MINORU FUKUCHI AU - TETSUYA HIGUCHI AU - YOSHITO TSUSHIMA AU - HIROYUKI KUWANO Y1 - 2014/07/01 UR - http://ar.iiarjournals.org/content/34/7/3623.abstract N2 - Background: [18F]-3-fluoro-alpha-methyl tyrosine (18F-FAMT) as an amino acid tracer in positron emission tomography (PET) has been widely investigated in several tumor types. Herein we investigated the clinical significance of 18F-FAMT PET uptake as a prognostic marker together in our updated data of patients with esophageal cancer. Patients and Methods: We retrospectively assessed the treatment outcomes of 42 patients with histologically-confirmed esophageal cancer. The survival rate was analyzed using the median peak standardized uptake value (SUV) with 2.2 as the cut-off value. Results: FAMT uptakes were significantly correlated with factors reflecting tumor progression. Moreover, a significant correlation was observed between FAMT uptake and disease-free survival (p=0.023). Moreover, on evaluation of individual lymph node groups, the specificity and positive predictive value were significantly higher for 18F-FAMT-PET than for 18F-FDG-PET and computed tomography (CT). Conclusion: 18F-FAMT is an important pre-treatment diagnostic modality and its accumulation is a good predictor of disease-free survival (DFS) in patients with operable esophageal cancer. ER -