The role of PET18 F-FDOPA in the evaluation of low grade gliomas.

1) Low grade gliomas are in general relatively slow-growing brain tumor, but they have a very heterogeneous clinical and biomolecular behavior. 2) The optimal treatment of low grade glioma remains controversial, i.e “wait-and-see” versus treatment. 3) The MRI is considered the gold standard in the evaluation of low grade glioma, but has several limitations. Since the glioma growth does not obey an exponential evolution due to the diffusion of many newly produced tumor cells into the surrounding parenchyma. Therefore, the tumor density does not reach the minimal threshold required to appear on MRI. 4) The PET 18 F-FDOPA has good sensitivity and specificity in the evaluation of brain tumor recurrence, mainly in the evaluation of the recurrence of low grade or high grade malignant gliomas. 5) In our study, PET 18 F-FDOPA demonstrated not a potential diagnostic role, but also a prognostic value in predicting progression of disease.