Predictive power of the post-treatment scans after the initial or first two courses of [ 177 Lu]-DOTA-TATE

Background The aim of this study was to evaluate the predictive power of the absorbed dose to kidneys after the first course of treatment with [177Lu]-DOTA-TATE for neuroendocrine tumors (NETs) on the cumulative kidney absorbed dose after 3 or 4 cycles of treatment. Post-treatment scans (PTS) are acquired after each cycle of peptide receptor radionuclide therapy (PRRT) with [177Lu]-DOTA-TATE for personalized radiation dosimetry in order to ensure a cumulative absorbed dose to kidneys under a safety threshold of 25 Gy. One hundred eighty-seven patients who completed treatment with [177Lu]-DOTA-TATE and underwent PTS for dosimetry calculation were included in this retrospective study. The correlation between the cumulative absorbed dose to kidneys after the completion of treatment and the absorbed dose after the first cycle(s) was studied. Multilinear regression analysis was done to predict the cumulative absorbed dose to the kidneys of the subsequent cycles, and an algorithm for the follow up of kidney absorbed dose is proposed.