Comparative performance of PET tracers in biochemical recurrence of prostate cancer: a critical analysis of literature.

Positron emission tomography (PET) with a number of tracers targeted to particular biological features of cancer has been explored for the imaging evaluation of patients with biochemical recurrence of prostate cancer after curative primary treatment. However, these reports are often heterogeneous in study design, patient cohorts, standards of reference for the imaging findings, data analysis, and data reporting. The aim of our study was to address these limitations by extracting and re-analyzing the PET detection data only from studies that satisfied pre-defined sets of patient selection criteria and verification standards. Our investigation analyzed the effects of 5 tracers ((18)F-fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG), (11)C-acetate (ACET), (11)C- or (18)F-choline (CHOL), anti-1-amino-3-(18)F-fluorocyclobutane-1-carboxylic acid (FACBC), and radiolabeled ligand targeted to prostate-specific membrane antigen (PSMA)), 2 treatment types (radical prostatectomy and radiation therapy), and whether the detected disease was local or metastatic, including lesion type (bone, lymph node, soft tissue). FDG exhibited the lowest detection rate for any suspected disease. ACET tended to be advantageous over CHOL in detecting local recurrence and lymph node lesions, even though the difference was not statistically significant. FACBC had greater likelihood of detecting local recurrence, when compared to CHOL, though this difference was not statistically significant. PSMA tended to show a higher proportion of patients with suspected disease compared to the other four tracers. Patients treated with radiation therapy had greater odds of displaying local recurrence on PET than those treated with radical prostatectomy. We also provide suggestions for future investigations that facilitate communication and the impact of the findings.