As others have said the rate at which CT scans are done varies with doctors' philosophies. In our case the Radiation Oncologist (RO) is absolutely opposed to doing scans, our ENT is indifferent and our Medical Oncologist (MO) demands them about every four to six months or so.

So far from end of treatments in July 05, two sets of scans have been done the fist in Nov 05 and the second in May 06.

For the first one we were told by the MO and two other doctors that the cancer had returned. We were shocked. Than we had our ENT and RO look at the scans and they assured us that there was no tumor or recurrence. The RO was very upset that the scans had been done in the first place.

RO went further to say that radiologists who read the scans sometines put the most pessimistic results in the report and this is for liability reasons. In essence this is a CYA tactic that protects themselves from lawsuits. In the RO words is hen left to the RO and/or the ENT to clean up the mess in the sense of reading scans and reassuring patients that all is normal after they been told that the cancer is back. In this case the RO had the scan report redone.

For the second set of scans we got the results today. The MO said that they were negative with respect to lymph nodes enlargement or nodules but the scans showed a tiny amount of fluid around the heart. Now we are worried about this. The MO could not tell us conclusively what was the cause of this fluid around the heart. I wonder what the RO will say when we see him next.