¹⁸F-FDG PET/CT-derived total lesion glycolysis predicts abscess formation in patients with surgically confirmed infective endocarditis: Results of a retrospective study at a tertiary center

Background: Abnormal activity of ¹⁸F-FDG PET/CT is a major Duke criterion in the diagnostic work-up of infective prosthetic valve endocarditis (IE). We hypothesized that quantitative lesion assessment by ¹⁸F-FDG PET/CT-derived standard maximum uptake ratio (SURmax), metabolic volume (MV), and total lesion glycolysis (TLG) might be useful in distinct subgroups of IE patients (e.g. IE-related abscess formation).

Methods: All patients (n = 27) hospitalized in our tertiary IE referral medical center from January 2014 to October 2018 with preoperatively performed ¹⁸F-FDG PET/CT and surgically confirmed IE were included into this retrospective analysis.

Results: Patients with surgically confirmed abscess formation (n = 10) had significantly increased MV (by ~ fivefold) and TLG (by ~ sevenfold) as compared to patients without abscess (n = 17). Receiver operation characteristics (ROC) analyses demonstrated that TLG (calculated as MV × SURmean, i.e. TLG (SUR)) had the most favorable area under the ROC curve (0.841 [CI 0.659 to 1.000]) in predicting IE-related abscess formation. This resulted in a sensitivity of 80% and a specificity of 88% at a cut-off value of 14.14 mL for TLG (SUR).

Conclusion: We suggest that ¹⁸F-FDG PET/CT-derived quantitative assessment of TLG (SUR) may provide a novel diagnostic tool in predicting endocarditis-associated abscess formation.