Usefulness of Respiratory-Gated 18F-FDG PET/CT in Detecting Upper Abdominal Fever Focus.

Respiratory-gated 18F-fluorodeoxygluocse (18F-FDG) PET/CT has been successfully used to better localize malignancies in the lung or upper abdominal organs. However, clinical usefulness of respiratory-gated 18F-FDG PET/CT in detection of fever focus has not been reported yet. A 68-year-old male patient with a history of living donor liver transplantation and biliary stenting was referred for 18F-FDG PET/CT due to fever of unknown origin (FUO). To find the accurate fever focus, respiratory-gated and non-gated 18F-FDG PET/CT was performed. Respiratory-gated PET/CT readily revealed prominent hypermetabolic lesion in the distal common bile duct (CBD) area where previous surgical graft was in situ. Maximum standardized uptake value (SUVmax) and SUV ratio (SUR) were greater in the gated PET/CT (SUVmax 5.4 and SUR 3.5) than in the non-gated PET/CT (SUVmax 4.6 and SUR 3.0). Fever dramatically subsided after removal of the graft in the CBD. This case report implies that respiratory-gated 18F-FDG PET/CT can visualize upper abdominal fever focus with better contrast than the conventional non-gated method.