Metabolic parameters with different thresholds for evaluating tumor recurrence and their correlations with hematological parameters in locally advanced squamous cell cervical carcinoma: an observational 18 F-FDG PET/CT study

About one-third of locally advanced cervical carcinoma (LACC) patients routinely treated with concurrent chemoradiotherapy (CCRT) relapse within 18 months after treatment and have a poor prognosis (1). A timely and accurate prognosis assessment is important for such patients because their treatment plan can be tailored in a timely manner or more/less intensive follow-up can be arranged to improve these patients’ survival and quality of life. Traditional factors such as Federation International of Gynecology and Obstetrics (FIGO) stage, tumor size, histological characteristics, biological characteristics and lymphatic metastasis are significant prognostic factors for tumor recurrence and survival in cervical cancer (2-7). Lymphatic metastasis is the most generally recognized of these factors, whereas the value of other factors remains controversial (4-9). Therefore, many research efforts have been devoted to the discovery of more accurate predictors