Surgical adhesive may cause false positives in integrated positron emission tomography and computed tomography after lung cancer resection

Surgical adhesives are frequently used after pulmonary resection to prevent or reduce pulmonary air leakages, since leakages may cause complications delaying the removal of chest drainage tubes and prolonging in-hospital stay. In this paper, we present 2 patients who underwent curative-intent pulmonary resection for non-small-cell lung carcinoma, in which the biological adhesive BioGlue(®) was used. Follow-up fluoro-2-deoxy-D-glucose positron emission tomography/computed tomographic (FDG-PET/CT) imaging revealed hypermetabolic pulmonary nodular lesions. Subsequent surgical exploration showed that the lesions were foreign body reactions to the bioadhesive. To our knowledge, this is the first study to examine false-positive follow-up FDG-PET/CT scans caused by the use of BioGlue(®) in pulmonary resection procedures.