ABSTRACT

A 49-year-old male patient with a prior history of poor compliance with medical appointments was referred for an ¹⁸F-fluoro-2-deoxy-D-glucose (¹⁸F-FDG) positron emission tomography/computed tomography (PET/CT) for the staging of a rectal squamous cell carcinoma. The PET/CT showed unilateral diffuse skeletal muscle ¹⁸F-FDG uptake as well as bilateral salivary gland uptake artifacts, suggestive of non-compliance with patient preparation instructions. The PET/CT nurse noted that during the ¹⁸F-FDG uptake phase, the patient appeared intoxicated, and she found two beer cans hidden in the waste disposal beside his chair just prior to imaging. The patient only admitted to eating a cookie approximately 30 minutes after the injection of ¹⁸F-FDG PET/CT and denied consuming alcohol during the uptake phase. We present the imaging findings of non-compliance with patient instructions during the uptake phase of ¹⁸F-FDG.

Ethics

Informed Consent: All subjects in the study gave written informed consent or the institutional review board waived the need to obtain informed consent.

Peer-review: External and internal peer-reviewed.

Authorship Contributions

Surgical and Medical Practices: W.M., E.W.H., Concept: W.M., Design: W.M., Data Collection or Processing: W.M., E.W.H., Analysis or Interpretation: W.M., E.W.H., Literature Search: W.M., E.W.H., Writing: W.M.

Conflict of Interest: No conflict of interest was declared by the authors.

Financial Disclosure: The authors declared that this study received no financial support.