Prognostic value of maximum standard uptake value, metabolic tumor volume, and total lesion glycolysis of positron emission tomography/computed tomography in patients with breast cancer: A systematic review and meta-analysis

Purpose A comprehensive systematic review of the literature was conducted on parameters from 18 F-FDG PET and a meta-analysis of the prognostic value of the maximal standard uptake value (SUVmax), metabolic tumor volume (MTV) and total lesional glycolysis (TLG) in patients with breast cancer (BC). Patients and methods Relevant English articles from PubMed, EMBASE, and the Cochrane Library were retrieved. Pooled hazard ratios (HRs) were used to assess the prognostic value of SUVmax, MTV, and TLG. Results A total of 20 primary studies with 3115 patients with BC were included. The combined HRs (95% confidence interval [CI] of higher SUVmax and higher TLG for event-free survival (EFS) were 1.53 (95% CI, 1.25–1.89, P = 0.0006) and 5.94 (95% CI, 2.57–13.71, P = 0.97), respectively. Regarding the overall survival (OS), the combined HRs were 1.22 (95%CI, 1.02–1.45, P = 0.0006) with higher SUVmax, and 2.91(95% CI, 1.75–4.85, P = 0.44) with higher MTV. Higher MTV showed no correlation with EFS [1.31(95% CI, 0.65–2.65, P = 0.18)] and similarly higher TLG showed no correlation with OS [1.20(95% CI, 0.65–2.23, P = 0.45)]. Subgroup analysis showed that SUVmax, with a median value of 5.55 was considered as a significant risk factor for both EFS and OS in BC patients. Conclusion Despite clinically heterogeneous BC patients and adoption of various methods between studies, the present meta-analysis results confirmed that patients with high SUVmax are at high risk of adverse events or death in BC patients, high MTV predicted a high risk of death and high TLG predicted a high risk of adverse events.