Surveillance of basaloid oral squamous cell carcinoma: the value of [¹⁸F]FDG-PET

Abstract 

Basaloid squamous cell carcinoma (BSCC) represents a rare but exceptionally aggressive variant of oral cancer. Hence, when tumors have been characterized to belong to this specific high-risk subpopulation, it remains an open issue how to manage the patients in terms of diagnostic surveillance and reconstruction. Therefore we explored whether glucose metabolism as measured by [¹⁸F]FDG-PET can accurately assess the disease status in the follow up of oral BSCC. The data of four patients with pathologically proven BSCC were analyzed in this study. These patients had [¹⁸F]FDG-PET scans after curative therapy to screen for local recurrence or disease generalization. The [¹⁸F]FDG-PET findings were correlated with clinical outcome. [¹⁸F]FDG-PET identified a site of recurrent tumor that was invisible to morphological imaging. None of the three patients with a normalized pattern of glucose uptake had secondary tumor progress within the further follow up period. Thus, [¹⁸F]FDG-PET proved valuable to identify those patients who will profit from early onset of reconstruction measures even though they originally belonged to a high-risk population.

Keywords:  Basaloid squamous cell carcinoma, Head and neck neoplasms, Positron emission tomography, PET, Recurrence, Standardized uptake value, SUV