Multimodality detection of metastatic melanoma

Abstract

A retrospective evaluation of radionuclide liver and spleen scintigraphy (LS), ultrasonography (US), and computed tomography (CT) was performed in 88 patients who had pathologically proven cutaneous melanoma. In patients who had all three examinations (n = 24), the matrix analysis showed that CT was significantly more sensitive (0.94) in detecting intra-abdominal metastasis when compared to US (0.62, P less than 0.05) and LS (0.38, P less than 0.01). Sixty-four patients had only US and LS studies. In this group of patients US was found to be more sensitive than LS, 0.88 and 0.54 respectively (P less than 0.01). Furthermore, when CT was compared with US, CT was shown to detect metastases significantly earlier than US (P = 0.03). Overall, CT provided the most accurate means for detecting the intra-abdominal metastases of cutaneous melanoma.