mlssa33438 wrote:My Dad was diagnosed with stage 3 stomach cancer last month, the Dr.'s have removed the tumor from his stomach. After surgery a CT scan was done and nothing was showing up, however he just completed a pet scan and one part of the report states "Diffuse rectoanal activity with an SUV max of 13.8 can anyone explain what that means?
As mentioned by the previous poster SUV appears to be very complicated.
This article (
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2563015/), though NOT about the PET SUV measurements in the stomach or rectum, (rather, it is for lung lesions) talks about cutoffs for PET SUV values based on the size of the lesions. The authors use pathology of the lesion (benign/malignant) after operation or biopsy to identify proper PET SUV cutoffs.
My take away from Table 2 is that it can be very difficult to determine a good cutoff for a PET Scan given the mean and standard deviations of the malignant and benign tumors.
So, what does this mean? Please do consult a good radiologist (and an oncologist) take a look at the reports.
Hope your dad gets a good read on the scan.