Is PET/CT essential in the diagnosis and follow-up of temporal arteritis?
The increasing availability and improvement of imaging techniques are deeply influencing diagnosis and work-up of patients affected with vasculitis, particularly those with large vessel vasculitis (LVV). Fluorodeoxyglucose (18F-FDG) positron emission tomography (PET), especially when integrated with computed tomography (CT), is taking hold as a useful diagnostic technique to examine the aorta and the other large vessels in giant cell arteritis (GCA) with concomitant large vessel involvement (LV-GCA). In this paper we examined the progresses performed in this field in the last twenty years and the evidence available so far according to two different points of view ('pros' and 'cons'), in order to give a comprehensive answer to a still open question about the role of PET/CT in the diagnosis and follow-up of GCA.
['Salvarani|Carlo|C|', 'Soriano|Alessandra|A|', 'Muratore|Francesco|F|', 'Shoenfeld|Yehuda|Y|', 'Blockmans|Daniel|D|']
D019788:Fluorodeoxyglucose F18 D005500:Follow-Up Studies D013700:Giant Cell Arteritis D006801:Humans D000072078:Positron Emission Tomography Computed Tomography D011379:Prognosis D019275:Radiopharmaceuticals
PET CT Imaging Large vessel vasculitis Fluorodeoxyglucose Positron emission tomography Computed tomography Giant cell arteritis (GCA) (18)F-FDG Temporal artery