Initial [18F]FDG PET/CT study for survival evaluation of lung transplantation patients with interstitial lung disease.

PURPOSE This study aimed to investigate the role of [18F]fluorodeoxyglucose ([18F]FDG) positron emission tomography/computed tomography (PET/CT) in survival prediction of interstitial lung diseases (ILD) patients undergoing lung transplantation (LTx). METHODS Eighty-three patients with ILD who underwent LTx were retrospectively included in this study, among whom 43 received unilateral LTx and 40 received bilateral LTx. All the patients received [18F]FDG PET/CT scanning prior to LTx. Clinical characteristics and [18F]FDG PET/CT parameters were analyzed by using univariate and multivariate analysis to identify predictive factors for overall survival (OS). Correlation of post-operative extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) time with clinical and [18F]FDG PET/CT parameters was analyzed by using Pearson's correlation analysis. RESULTS Post-operative ECMO time (p < 0.001), age (p = 0.006) and LDH (p = 0.015) were independent predictive factors for OS of unilateral LTx patients. In addition, LDH (p = 0.03) and gender (p = 0.03) were identified as independent factors for OS of bilateral LTx patients. Especially, we found that glucose metabolism (maximum standardized uptake values (SUVmax) of non-transplanted lung, SUVmaxNT) was an independent factor for OS (p = 0.027) of unilateral LTx patients. For patients with bilateral LTx, SUVmin of bilateral lungs exhibited a strong trend in predicting OS (p = 0.08). Furthermore, SUVmean, SUVsum and total lesion glycolysis (TLG) were significantly correlated with post-operative ECMO time. CONCLUSION This study for the first time suggested that [18F]FDG PET/CT could be a potential approach in predicting OS of LTx patients with ILD, which might be helpful for the survival evaluation of ILD patients with LTx.