Correlation between the probability of malignancy and maximum standard uptake values of mediastinal lymph nodes on 18F-FDG positron emission tomography scan sampled by endobronchial ultrasound-guided-transbronchial needle aspiration:A retrospective analysis

INTRODUCTION: Endobronchial ultrasound-guided transbronchial needle aspiration (EBUS-TBNA) is frequently used as an important initial investigation for diagnosing and staging for both suspected malignant and benign mediastinal lesions for the last 10 years. AIM: We aimed to analyze the correlation between probability of malignity by EBUS-TBNA and maximum standard uptake value (SUVmax) obtained by 18F-labeled fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography-computed tomography (18F-FDG PET CT). METHODS: This is a retrospective study using hospitals' database records. Demographic features of the patients, characteristics of the biopsied lymph nodes (LNs), PET-CT results, and SUVmax are obtained from hospital database system. RESULTS: A total of 322 patients underwent EBUS-TBNA for a final diagnosis. The mean age was 59.4 years. The most common final diagnosis was nonsmall cell lung cancer. When we compared the average SUVmax, as the SUVmax increased, the probability of malignity increased significantly (P < 0.001). We studied a Youden index for SUVmax and the cutoff point for SUVmax was 9 for 54.39% sensitivity and 79.1% specificity. CONCLUSION: Our study in a real-life setting showed that EBUS-TBNA is effective in diagnosing patients who had mediastinal LNs suspected of malignancy. We also showed that as the SUVmax increased, the probability of malignancy increased. We believe that more data are needed from a larger number of patients from different centers