CASE REPORT article
Front. Med.
Sec. Nuclear Medicine
Volume 12 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fmed.2025.1578613
This article is part of the Research TopicCase Reports in PET Imaging 2024View all articles
Case report: Adrenal gland splenosis mimicking a neuroendocrine tumor on 68 Ga-DOTATATE and 18 F-FDG PET/CT imaging
Provisionally accepted
- Affiliated Hospital of Zunyi Medical University, Zunyi, China
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Splenosis occurring in adrenal glands is relatively rare and is easily misdiagnosed as neoplastic lesions. Herein, we present a case of a 39-year-old woman who underwent a pancreatic tail resection and splenectomy 8 years ago due to caudal pancreatic neuroendocrine tumor and splenic invasion. She underwent abdominal ultrasound examination in an external hospital a month ago due to abdominal discomfort and found a lump in the left adrenal gland. She was admitted to our hospital for further diagnosis and treatment. Abdominal computed tomography (CT) examination revealed a nodule of equal soft tissue density on her left adrenal gland, which presented obvious uniform enhancement on contra-enhanced CT. Subsequently, she underwent fluorine-18 fluorodeoxyglucose ( 18 F-FDG) and gallium-68 labeld 1, 4, 7, 10-tetraazacyclododecane-1, 4, 7,10-tetraaceticacid -D-Phel-Tyr3-Thr8-OC ( 68 Ga-DOTATATE) positron emission tomography (PET)/CT imagings, and showed slightly increased 18 F-FDG uptake and obviously increased 68 Ga-DOTATATE uptake in the lesion, suggesting the possibility of neuroendocrine tumor 2 metastasis. However, postoperative pathology confirmed that the lesion was splenosis. Our case suggests that adrenal gland splenosis should be considered as a differential diagnosis of adrenal tumors, understanding the clinical and imaging features of splenosis can reduce misdiagnosis and avoid unnecessary surgical intervention.
Keywords: Splenosis, adrenal gland, neuroendocrine tumor, PET/CT, CT
Received: 18 Feb 2025; Accepted: 22 Apr 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Hu, Zhao and Wang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Xianwen Hu, Affiliated Hospital of Zunyi Medical University, Zunyi, China
Pan Wang, Affiliated Hospital of Zunyi Medical University, Zunyi, China
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