There is information in the main body of the web site at these two locations about pet scans, they answer some of the questions posted here. Use the search engine in the main site and the 2nd engine on the message board to look for your questions, and frequently you will find it is already answered somewhere.
http://www.oralcancerfoundation.org/diagnosis.htm http://www.oralcancerfoundation.org/news/news5.htm The issue with PETs is that they do not find cancer, they find cells that are rapidly metabolizing sugar. This happens when cells are dividing. When you get a bunch of them close together that are metabolizing lots of sugar, that COULD be cancer since one of the characteristics of cancer cells is that they reproduce faster than normal cells, burning more sugar in the process. When a PET finds something like this, the only thing the doctors can do is do a secondary procedure like a biopsy, surgically perhaps, to actually get some of these cells to look at in the pathology lab. If you have a metastasis from oral cancer, even to the cervical nodes, there is the POSSIBILITY that those cancer cells, which now have access to anywhere your lymphatic system goes, could be somewhere else in your body as well. A PET will turn up likely areas to explore further. It will not find cancer per se, just places that deserve a closer examination. Please note, that even a CT scan or and MRI do not diagnose cancer as I have said before. They only find masses of tissue that may be cancer... masses detected by imaging techniques can be benign tumors, cysts, etc., as well as the big C itself.
