The role of nuclear medicine in the management of thymomas.

AIM OF THE STUDY To evaluate the role of nuclear medicine techniques in the management of patients with thymoma. MATERIALS AND METHODS The Authors performed a review of the literature about the usefulness of traditional nuclear medicine and positron emission tomography in patients with thymic tumours. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION Nuclear medicine imaging can provide additional information in cases of thymoma such as in differential diagnosis between thymic tumours, staging and restaging. Thallium-201 (201Tl), 99mTc-sestamibi and 99mTc-tetrofosmin are useful tumour-imaging agent. Another radiopharmaceutical useful in the management of thymomas is 111In-pentetreotide, a somatostatin analogue, used to define the receptor status and the extent of disease in malignant thymomas. Positron emission tomography (PET) is a powerful diagnostic tool for diagnosis, staging and restaging of neoplasms in general. The most used PET radiopharmaceutical is the fluorodeoxyglucose (18F-FDG), a glucose analogue. The uptake of FDG reflects the metabolic activity of organs and neoplasms and correlates with the tumour growth rate. There is a paucity of literature on the use of PET scanning in the diagnosis of thymoma. Further perspective studies with a larger number of cases, considering the development of hybrid imaging PET-CT and new PET radiopharmaceuticals, may increase the role of nuclear medicine in the diagnostic and therapeutic management of thymic neoplasms.