Keywords:
Head and neck, Oncology
Authors:
C. Pfannenberg, P. Aschoff, D. Doycheva, J. Hetzel, C. D. Claussen, M. Reimold, M. Zierhut; Tübingen/DE
DOI:
10.1594/ecr2010/C-1766
Purpose
Uveitis is a sight-threatening intraocular inflammation and one of the leading causes of visual impairment in young people. Tuberculosis (TB) is one of the underlying systemic diseases in patients with uveitis and one of the few causes of uveitis with a definitive effective treatment (1,2).
However, diagnosis of ocular TB is difficult due to the wide spectrum of clinical presentations (Figure 1) and limitations of current diagnostic strategies including, tuberculin skin tests, interferon-gamma release assays such as QuantiFERON® -TB Gold test, radiology and invasive tissue biopsy (2).
Radiological abnormalities may be minimal or atypical in patients with ocular TB, especially in absence of pulmonary disease or clinically evident systemic TB.
Besides its established role in cancer staging 18F-FDG PET/CT has been increasingly used for diagnosing of inflammatory conditions and occult infections, because activated lymphocytes and macrophages also present high rates of glycolysis (3-5).
The aim of our study was to evaluate if 18F-FDG- PET/CT may help to establish the diagnosis of tuberculosis induced ocular inflammation in patients with positive QuantiFERON-TB Gold assay.