“Vascular inflammation and cardiovascular disease: review about the role of PET imaging”

Abstract

Inflammation characterizes all stages of atherothrombosis and provides a critical pathophysiological link between plaque formation and its acute rupture, leading to coronary occlusion and heart attack. In the last 20 years the possibility of quantifying the degree of inflammation of atherosclerotic plaques and, therefore, also of vascular inflammation aroused much interest. 18Fluoro-deoxy-glucose photon-emissions-tomography (18F-FDG-PET) is widely used in oncology for staging and searching metastases; in cardiology, the absorption of 18F-FDG into the arterial wall was observed for the first time incidentally in the aorta of patients undergoing PET imaging for cancer staging. PET/CT imaging with 18F-FDG and 18F-sodium fluoride (18F-NaF) has been shown to assess atherosclerotic disease in its molecular phase, when the process may still be reversible. This approach has several limitations in the clinical practice, due to lack of prospective data to justify their use routinely, but it’s desirable to develop further scientific evidence to confirm this technique to detect high-risk patients for cardiovascular events.