Can preoperative 18F-fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography parameters predict the molecular subtype of breast cancer?

Background: This study aims to evaluate the predictive value of metabolic parameters in detecting invasive breast cancer molecular subtypes. Methods: We enrolled 112 patients who had a preoperative ¹⁸F-fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography computed tomography (¹⁸F-FDG PET-CT) scan and were operated on with a diagnosis of invasive breast cancer between January 2017 and August 2020. We evaluated associations among maximum standardized uptake value (SUV_max), metabolic tumor volume (MTV), total lesion glycolysis (TLG), and clinicopathological findings by dividing the specimen into three tumor subtypes according to estrogen receptor (ER), progesterone receptor (PR), and human epidermal growth factor receptor (HER-2) expressions. Results: There was a significant difference between the three groups in the SUV_max value of axillary lymph node metastasis (P = 0.014), but no significant difference was revealed for TLG and MTV (P = 0.858 and P = 0.083, respectively). There was a significant difference between groups in SUV_max and TLG (P < 0.001 and P = 0.001, respectively) for the primary tumor, but no significant difference was observed in MTV (P = 0.051). Conclusion: We suggest that primary tumor SUV_max can be used to differentiate triple-negative patients from other subgroups, and primary tumor TLG can be used to distinguish hormone receptor positive (HR+) patients from other subgroups.