Breast Cancer - 34-year-old female

History
A 34-year-old female with recently diagnosed left breast cancer and positive left axillary nodes.

CT Findings

Right upper lobe pulmonary nodules

Left axillary nodes/hematoma

PET Findings

Right thoracic paraspinal focus

Negative lung nodules

Mildly positive left axillary nodes

Follow-up MRI

Shows abnormal signal transverse process of T4, metastasis

Retrospective CT Review

Subtle transverse process metastasis discovered on retrospective CT review following the PET scan

Previous Bone Scan Report

"No evidence of osseous metastases"

Conclusions

PET demonstrated metastases that may be difficult to identify on CT and bone scan (especially lytic metastases)

PET combined with MRI pinpointed and documented areas of tumor involvement

Of Note: this patient had no bone pain

Courtesy of
Harry Agress, Jr., M.D., Hackensack University Medical Center, Hackensack, NJ