Comparison between RECIST and PERCIST criteria in therapeutic response assessment in cases of lymphoma

Abstract

Background: Accurate radiologic assessment of treatment response in lymphomas is important for helping the clinicians to properly evaluate effectiveness of treatment and consequently guide therapeutic management of these patients. Imaging tools based on anatomic response are suboptimal in detecting functional changes in tumors resulting after early effective treatment. Recently, with the development of 18F-FDG PET/CT, both functional and anatomic information has been integrated for assessing treatment response in both solid tumors and hematologic malignancies. The aim of this study was to compare therapeutic response in lymphoma patients using both RECIST 1.1 and PERCIST 1.0 criteria. Results: Among the included 33 lymphoma patients, RECIST 1.1 and PERCIST 1.0 classifications of therapeutic response were concordant in 20 patients (60.6%) and discordant in 13 patients (39.4%), with a tendency of RECIST 1.1 to downgrade the tumor response in 12/13 patients (P value < 0.001). Conclusion: The recently applied PERCIST 1.0 is efficient and more accurate than RECIST 1.1 to assess treatment response in lymphoma patients, which is subsequently affecting further management of these patients.