Table 1.

Patient characteristics

	Whole patient group	Histopathological confirmation
	(n = 202)	(n = 73)
Age (years)	61.9 ± 14.9	54.2 ± 17.3
Gender (M/F)	120/82	43/30
Tumor type a,b
Lung cancer	38	30
Head and neck cancer	22	14
Gastrointestinal cancerc	31	7
Breast cancer	21	4
Lymphoma	36	9
Melanoma	19	2
Multiple melanoma	15	5
Otherd	18	2
Clinical question b
Diagnosis	22	10
Staging	20	11
Restaginge	33	18
Response to chemotherapy	58	6
Response to radiotherapy	18	6
Post-surgery evaluation	11	0
Surveillance	40	22

Values are mean ± standard deviation.

^aTwo patients were not affected by any oncologic disease after histologic confirmation.

^bTumor type and clinical questions correspond to the groups submitted to the tumor-based and question-based analyses.

^cIncluding esophageal, gastric, and colorectal cancer.

^dGynecologic malignancy (n = 8), testicular cancer (n = 2), sarcoma (n = 3), low-differentiated neuroendocrine carcinoma (n = 4), thymoma (n = 1).

^eSuspected relapse or patients with potentially resectable metastatic disease.