الفهرس 
Anatomy of the LungOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
The finding of a solitary pulmonary nodule (SPN) on a chest radiograph is a common problem in pulmonary medicine. Ninety percent of SPN are incidental radiological findings found unexpectedly in radiographs obtained for unrelated diagnostic workups; leading physicians to face a diagnostic dilemma of SPN (Leef and Klein, 2002).
An evaluation of a patient with a SPN is a common diagnostic problem in daily radiology practice; because the treatment plan differs according to the possibility of malignancy (Zwirewich et al, 1991).
A variety of radiologic procedures have been used for this purpose and currently high-resolution computed tomography (HRCT) is considered one of the most important non invasive diagnostic techniques (Gurney and Swensen, 1995).
Although its clinical usefulness has been established, differentiating benign from malignant pulmonary nodules, even with the use of high-resolution computed tomography (HRCT), remains a difficult task for radiologists; because there is an overlapping spectrum of radiographic appearances and clinical parameters among benign and malignant nodules (Watanabe et al, 1997).
It is also important to avoid the morbidity and mortality associated with thoracotomy in patients with benign disease. Therefore, the goal of the evaluation and management of solitary pulmonary nodules is to promptly identify and bring to surgery all patients with operable malignant nodules while avoiding thoracotomy in patients with benign nodules (David and Alan, 2000).
Recently, Positron emission tomography (PET) has come to the aid of clinicians. PET uses a radioactive glucose analogue, fluorine-18-labeled fluoro-2-deoxyglucose (FDG), to map metabolic activity of tissues based on their utilization of blood glucose (Goldsmith and Kostakoglu, 2000).
Giving the success of PET and a large volume of data on lesion morphologic characteristics on CT, it was only logical to combine physiologic and anatomic imaging into a single study PET-CT. While having the benefits of both studies, PET-CT appears to hold a promising role in the care of oncologic patients (Aquino et al, 2002).
Aim of the work
The aim of this work is to evaluate the role of PET-CT in the diagnosis of solitary pulmonary nodule.