The use of F-18 FDG-PET for diagnosing infected cardiac prosthetic devices increased dramatically from 2010 to 2024, according to a study presented September 5 at the American Society of Nuclear Cardiology annual meeting in Orlando, FL.
Over the period, the overall incidence proportion increased from 0.13% to 1.21% (per 1,000 patients), reflecting an approximately 830% increase, presenter Abdul Khan, MD, of the University of Missouri Kansas City, told session attendees.
“These findings highlight the growing acceptance and potential of FDG-PET as a pivotal diagnostic tool in this setting,” Khan noted.
Cardiac prosthetic devices have revolutionized the management of advanced cardiac disease, yet the benefits of these devices are tempered by the risk of infection, Khan explained. F-18 FDG-PET has emerged as a highly sensitive and specific modality for detecting inflammatory processes, including infections associated with cardiac prostheses.
To elucidate trends in F-18 FDG-PET scan usage for diagnosing infected cardiac prosthetic devices, in this study, Khan and colleagues culled patient data from the TriNetX database, a global network of deidentified electronic health records and other real-world data from healthcare organizations.
They divided the study period into five distinct windows (2010 to 2012, 2013 to 2015, 2016 to 2018, 2019 to 2021, and 2022 to 2024) and calculated incidence proportions for FDG-PET-diagnosed infections and incidence rates (cases per person-day) to quantify FDG-PET scan use. They further stratified data by gender, race, and ethnicity.
According to the findings, the overall incidence proportion of FDG-PET diagnosed infections increased from 0.13% between 2010 and 2012 to 1.21% between 2022 and 2024, reflecting an approximately 830% increase, with a corresponding 960% rise in the incidence rate from 0.14 to 1.49 cases/100,000 person-days.
A sex-based analysis revealed that men consistently had higher incidence proportions and incidence rates compared with women throughout the study period. Specifically, between 2022 and 2024, the incidence proportion for men was 1.42, while women had an incidence proportion of 1.01.
In addition, race-stratified data showed substantial variation in use trends. African Americans (0.69) and Native Americans (0.685) had the highest incidence proportions over the study period, followed by whites (0.62) and Hispanics (0.48), whereas Native Hawaiians had the least (0.24). Finally, Hispanic patients recorded the highest increase in incidence proportion (2,152%), followed by Black or African American patients (1,160%), whereas Native American and Asian patients recorded decreases in utilization (-20% and -37%, respectively), the researchers reported.
“The utilization of FDG-PET scans for diagnosing infected cardiac prostheses exhibited a profound upward trend over the study period from 2010 to 2024,” Khan noted.
The study findings suggest that integrating F-18 FDG-PET into standardized diagnostic protocols could enhance early detection and management of cardiac device-related infections, Khan and colleagues concluded.
