Metabolic tumor volume predicts long-term survival after transplantation for unresectable colorectal liver metastases: 15 years of experience from the SECA study

Objective To report 15 years of experience with metabolic tumor volume (MTV) of liver metastases from the preoperative 18 F-FDG PET/CT to predict long-term survival after liver transplantation (LT) for unresectable colorectal liver metastases (CRLM). Methods The preoperative 18 F-FDG PET/CT from all SECA 1 and 2 patients was evaluated. MTV was obtained from all liver metastases. The patients were divided into one group with low MTV ( 70 cm 3 ) based on a receiver operating characteristic analysis. Overall survival (OS), disease-free survival (DFS) and post recurrence survival (PRS) for patients with low versus high MTV were compared using the Kaplan–Meier method and log rank test. Clinopathological features between the two groups were compared by a nonparametric Mann–Whitney U test for continuous and Fishers exact test for categorical data. Results At total of 40 patients were included. Patients with low MTV had significantly longer OS ( p