I wonder if Brian or anyone here can give me some input on having a test by PET/CT scanner. I attended a talk today by a private hospital on cancer diagnosis and treatment. The speaker highly recommended using this for cancer detection and claimed that this is the most advanced and accurate equipment so far available. This scanner is a combination of PET and CT. The private hospital is making some sort of promotion and with a referral from a public hospital, the test costs about USD$1200. Since I was treated in a public hospital here, I never had a PET scan and my oncologist said that it always shows false alarm. My question is whether it is worth taking this scan as a follow up test on top of those I have on routine checkup like ultra sound, MRI to detect possible met.?

Karen stage 4 tonsil cancer diagnosed in 9/01

Karen,
go here to see an article from Sloan Kettering about PET/CT http://www.mskcc.org/mskcc/html/6371.cfm

Gary-
That was a great link that many of us, including Karen, benefited from. Thank you for that post!
Desiree'

To add a little personal experience, I've had 3 PET/CT scans done at Adventist in Hong Kong, they're affiliated with Soan-Kettering some way. The worry about the false-positive comes from the way the PET part works. The PET as I understand it shows cellular activity, actually I think an uptake in glucose levels. Cancer cells are more active, so they would show increased cellular activity.

Problem is, infected lymph nodes, and damaged muscles in the healing process sometimes also show increased uptake.

My doc seems to be of the opinion that the tests might be as high as 20% false positive, but that MRI isn't any more accurate actually.

This last go around, the tests showed 3 suspicious nodes, with one being real suspicious. Needle biopsy confirmed the cancer so during the neck dissection they removed amoung others, all three nodes. 2 were cancerous, the third and some others were infected.

In a nutshell, I'd still reccomend the PET/CT based on my experience. The other good part of it is that the PET/CT computer data can be used to program the IMRT equipment for a higher degree of accuracy.

Hope this helps, I'd have to check my insurance billing, but the price seems a little steep for the test though.
Bob

That answer could be found using the web sites search feature, and it would have found this news article http://www.oralcancerfoundation.org/news/story.asp?newsId=32 The MSK link is a good one also.

Thank you all for your input. Based on the information I have read,I am actively thinking of having one and will discuss it with my oncologist this coming Tuesday.

Karen stage 4 tonsil cancer diagnosed in 9/01.