Review finds FDG PET/CT beats conventional imaging for lymph node staging in penile cancer, though evidence base remains limited.
Journal: Seminars in Nuclear Medicine | Published: 2025-11-29 | Type: Review | PMID: 41320612 Authors: Badrane I, Nieri A, Albano D, Arslan E, Ceriani V, Lancia F, Cittanti C, Bartolomei M, Urso L (University of Ferrara, ASST Spedali Civili Brescia, University of Health Sciences Turkey) Funding/COI: Funding not disclosed. All authors declare no competing financial interests.
Penile squamous cell carcinoma is rare, and prognosis hinges on lymph node involvement — which conventional imaging (CT, MRI, ultrasound) struggles to assess accurately. This review synthesizes available evidence on [¹⁸F]FDG PET/CT, a metabolic imaging modality that tracks glucose uptake in metabolically active tissue. The authors conclude it outperforms conventional imaging for detecting inguinal and pelvic nodal metastases, though the authors themselves characterize the supporting evidence as "limited."
This is a narrative review, not a meta-analysis or systematic review. No pooled statistics, forest plots, or PRISMA methodology are described in the abstract. The authors do not specify how many studies were included, their total sample sizes, or how heterogeneous the populations were. Penile cancer is rare — globally roughly 1–2 per 100,000 men — so even the aggregate evidence base across all studies is likely small. "High sensitivity and specificity" is a conclusion without numbers attached, which in a review abstract is a yellow flag: those figures can vary enormously depending on which studies are included and how.
The claim that SUVmax has a "prognostic role" is described as "preliminary data," which is an honest hedge, but preliminary data from a rare cancer means very small samples and a high risk of spurious correlations.
A competent review of a niche topic, constrained by the thin evidence base it surveys. If you work in urologic oncology or nuclear medicine and want a consolidated reference on PET/CT in penile cancer, this is probably useful. If you want hard numbers on diagnostic performance, you'll need to go deeper into the primary studies — this abstract gives you conclusions without the data behind them. The missing funding disclosure is a minor irritant for an academic review with no obvious commercial angle, but it should be noted. File under: informative summary of limited evidence, not a reason to change clinical practice.