Comparison of whole body positron emission tomography (PET)/PET-computed tomography and conventional anatomic imaging for detecting distant malignancies in patients with head and neck cancer: A meta-analysis

Objectives/Hypothesis: We aimed to compare the accuracy of whole body positron emission tomography (PET)/PET‐computed tomography (CT) and conventional anatomic imaging for detecting distant malignancies in patients with head and neck cancer. Study Design: Meta‐Analysis. Methods: We performed a meta‐analysis of all available studies. We compared the performance of whole body PET/PET‐CT with that of conventional anatomic imaging by analyzing studies that had also used conventional anatomic imaging on the same patients. Results: Across eight studies (1,147 patients), sensitivity and specificity of PET/PET‐CT were 0.83 (95% confidence interval [CI], 0.76–0.88) and 0.96 (95% CI, 0.94–0.97), respectively, and for conventional anatomic imaging were 0.44 (95% CI, 0.29–0.61) and 0.96 (95% CI, 0.88–0.98), respectively. Subgroup analysis showed that PET/PET‐CT had higher sensitivity than conventional anatomic imaging for nasopharyngeal cancer (0.82 vs. 0.30) and non‐nasopharyngeal head and neck cancer (0.85 vs. 0.62). Conclusions: Compared with conventional anatomic imaging, whole body PET/PET‐CT has excellent diagnostic performance for detecting distant malignancies in patients with head and neck cancer.