As they say, when the map does not match the road or ground, it's not the road or ground that's wrong. PET/CTs sugar measurements simply do not differentiate between cancer cells and recovering cells intake of sugar. In prior posts, I recounted how livid I was with the standard radiologist's disclaimer that a high SUV means that cancer "cannot be ruled out" when that is true of every PET/CT scan. I pushed back hard and had the head of the Nuclear medicine department reread my scans as well as sit down with me an interpret the next one. As a result, he changed the report to state that the high SUV on my right side was probably not cancer (and the subsequent surgery proved him right).
The competence and experience of the radiologist who interprets the reports is an essential element of its validity. The better trained and more experienced radiologists are often promoted to management positions leaving the interpretations to the less skilled or residents.
Luckily my CCC radiology oconolgist has an open mind and after I refreshed his memory and walked him through the worthlessness of two out of the four PET/CT scans he had ordered , agreed that my 6 month checkup tomorrow will be a MRI instead of a PET/CT scan. My ENT surgeon needed no such wake up call as she had already shared her experiences at the massive disparity between PET scan reports and physiological reality she has seen in over thirty years of surgery.
Make no mistake, PET/CT scans are an invaluable aid in planning the coverage and radiation spray of TX. That's why only two out of my four PETscans had value. The extra information of metabolic activity (even when misleading)as well as finer resolution of the combined CT scanner than traditional ones allows the RO to keep the damage to normal tissues and organs down to a minimum. PET scans are excellent for some things, but their inability to distinguish normal cell recovery after TX from cancer places a limit on their diagnostic utility for remission that causes a lot of unnecessary worry as well as false hope to too many cancer patients, myself in the forefront. I do agree with Markus that the hardest thing is to accept that none of these tests can tell us that we do not have cancer and that a biopsy is the way to go. Well said Marcus