Statistical analysis of 18 F-fluorodeoxyglucose positron-emission tomography/computed tomography ground-glass nodule findings

F-fluorodeoxyglucose positron-emission tomography/computed tomography ( F-FDG-PET/CT) is important in lung cancer diagnosis; false negatives are often caused by ground-glass nodules (GGNs). PET/CT utility in GGN diagnosis is unknown. The associations between GGN CT findings (size, properties), the pathological diagnosis and maximum standardized uptake value (SUV ) were explored. Sixty-six patients with pathological stage IA1-IIA lung adenocarcinoma underwent surgical resection and PET/CT between January 2010 and December 2014. Clinical characteristics, CT findings, pathological diagnoses and PET/CT findings were retrospectively examined. The age range was 47-86 years (median, 69 years), the female/male ratio was 38:28 and the pathological stage was IA1, IA2, IA3, IB and IIA in 5, 30, 21, 9 and 1, respectively. Total and solid-part lesion diameters ranged from 7.00-41.13 mm (median, 19.43 mm) and 0.00-23.23 mm (median, 4.55 mm), respectively; the solid-part ratio (solid-part diameter/total diameter) was 0-77% (median, 20%). SUV ranged from a value too low for evaluation to 3.9 (median, 1.0). Pathological diagnoses were adenocarcinoma (AIS), minimally invasive adenocarcinoma (MIA), lepidic-predominant adenocarcinoma (LPA) and papillary predominant adenocarcinoma (PPA) in 17, 15, 32 and 2, respectively. Correlation coefficients for each factor and SUV for total and solid-part diameters were 0.513 (p