Highlight: PET scans for Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma: Answering the Critical
Questions to Assess Utility.
Abstract
Standard management of pediatric Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma (NHL) patients
have included an initial assessment of the disease at presentation to
establish it’s extent. This “staging” process has historically
assigned patients using traditional classifications which were
established decades ago when, like other pediatric malignancies, the
more extensive involvement of the cancer for a patient directly
correlated with the patient’s long term
survival[[1]](#ref-0001). Advances in radiologic technology
have evolved in the way the disease extent was evaluated, moving from
conventional radiographs, to computerized tomography (CT) to magnetic
resonance imaging (MRI) to most recently positron emission tomography
(PET)[[2]](#ref-0002). Despite the development and use of PET
scans for decades for various cancer diagnoses, the role of PET scans
for NHL remains unclear[[3]](#ref-0003). Indeed, its value for
many conditions is its ability to assess the response to initial therapy
and establish the patient’s risk stratification guiding the remaining
treatment plan[[4]](#ref-0004). Such efforts have not occurred
in clinical trials of NHL and thus we are left to examine case series
and try to discern its value for this disease.