"FDG PET/CT could be useful in the diagnosis of clinically suspected spondylodiscitis in patients with persistent back pain, according to a presentation last week at the 2009 European Association of Nuclear Medicine (EANM) congress in Barcelona, Spain" reported HealthImaging.com in their blog. This may indeed be so, however this was a study on 22 patients only. How did they calculate that FDG PET/CT with a sensitivity of 82% vs MRI's 67% was better? Assume that 11 of these 22 patients actually had spondylodiscitis. Then 82% is 9 patients and 67% is 7.4 patients, so one or two patients more were detected with PET/CT than with MRI. Couldn't this easily be diagnostic noise?
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