Nadebaum DP, Krishnadas N, Poon AMT, et al. - The results showed that among patients referred for the assessment of cognitive impairment, ¹⁸F-fluoro-2-deoxyglucose positron emission tomography (¹⁸F-FDG PET) is superior to cerebral blood flow (CBF)-SPECT in detecting Alzheimer disease (AD).

• Researchers recruited a total of 126 patients, 56% with mild cognitive impairment and 44% with dementia, completed both CBF-SPECT and ¹⁸F-FDG PET as part of their diagnostic assessment, and subsequently had undergone β-amyloid PET for research purposes.

• According to the findings, clinicians reported high diagnostic confidence in 83% of ¹⁸F-FDG PET in comparison with 67% for CBF-SPECT (P = 0.001).

• Using ¹⁸F-FDG PET, all reviewers showed individually higher accuracy.

• The data indicated that the combined area under the receiver operating characteristic curve in diagnosing AD was 0.71 for ¹⁸F-FDG PET and 0.61 for CBF-SPECT (P = 0.02).

• The findings showed that 76% vs 43% (P < 0.001) were the sensitivity of ¹⁸F-FDG PET and CBF-SPECT, while specificity was 74% vs 83% (P = 0.45).