End-of-treatment ¹⁸F-FDG PET/CT in diffuse large B cell lymphoma patients: ΔSUV outperforms Deauville score

Abstract

In DLBCL, the Deauville scoring system (DS) is the standard for PET/CT response assessment. An alternative system, based on the semi-quantitative change in standardized uptake values, namely ΔSUVmax, has been reported to be more objective than the DS. We aimed to compare ΔSUVmax and DS for risk stratification of DLBCL patients on end-of-treatment (EoT) PET. 108 consecutive patients were included. 2-year EFS Kaplan–Meier survival analyses and Cox regression models were performed. 2-year EFS was significantly different between favorable ΔSUVmax (favΔ < −86.5%) and unfavorable ΔSUVmax (unfavΔ ≥ −86.5%) patients: 100.0% ± 0.0 versus 58.3% ± 14.2 (p = 0.001). On Cox multivariable regression, ΔSUVmax status was the only independent predictor of 2-year EFS, outperforming DS. Therefore, ΔSUVmax should be computed for non-responder patients, especially DS4, as the 2-year EFS is not different between responders and non-responders in the case of favΔ. Further studies are needed in order to confirm this hypothesis.

Keywords:

• PET
• FDG
• DLBCL
• Deauville score
• Delta SUV
• end-of-treatment

Ethical approval and consent to participate

All procedures performed in this study were conducted according to the principles expressed in the Declaration of Helsinki. According to European regulations, French observational studies without any additional therapy or monitoring procedures do not need ethics approval. However, we sought approval to collect data for our study from the national committee for data privacy and the National Commission on Informatics and Liberty (CNIL) with registration no. 2081250 v 0.

Informed consent

The patients provided their informed consent for their participation.

Acknowledgments

The authors acknowledge Helen Lapasset for English reviewing.

Disclosure of interest

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The raw data supporting the conclusions of this article will be made available by the authors, upon reasonable request.