Metabolic assessment by PET in the treatment of esophageal cancer

The use of [¹⁸F]-2-fluoro-deoxy-D-glucose positron emission tomography (FDG-PET) imaging is emerging as an important tool in the treatment of esophageal cancer. Over a decade ago, the MUNICON investigators first incorporated metabolic assessment by PET into clinical trial design and evaluated the strategy of taking patients with locally advanced gastroesophageal junction (GEJ) adenocarcinomas, who had a suboptimal response to two weeks of induction chemotherapy with 5-fluorouracil (FU)/cisplatin directly to surgery (1).