Advantages | ā¢ Commonly available in many hospitals |
Ā | ā¢ Easy to manufacture and easy to transport |
Ā | ā¢ Mechanisms which predict an altered tracer activity in PAH have been relatively well studied |
Disadvantages | ā¢ No consensus exists on appropriate patient preparation prior to imaging (e.g. overnight fasting and glucose loading), leading to inconsistencies in results between centers |
Ā | ā¢ Lung and right ventricular 18F-FDG uptake does not correlate with disease severity or survival |
Ā | ā¢ Lung and right ventricular 18F-FDG uptake rapidly normalize upon PAH treatment, questioning the utility of 18F-FDG PET in the follow-up of patients |
Ā | ā¢ Corrections for lung density have not been performed |
Ā | ā¢ Increased FDG uptake in the heart could either reflect an increase in |
Ā | ā¢ After load or a direct, after load-independent, change in energy metabolism. It is not possible to determine the relative contributions of both processes |