What PET Sees

 PET is a procedure that is able to detect small cancerous tumors, and also subtle changes in the brain and heart. This enables physicians to treat these diseases earlier and more accurately than if they waited for the results from other detection modalities.

A PET scan puts time on your side! The earlier the diagnosis, the better the chance for successful treatment.click here

PET scans offer patients hope.

PET can detect disease sooner and the earlier the detection, the more likely the cure! Prior to changes in structure that normally would show up on a CT or MRI scan, a PET scan can reveal metabolic changes in the body. Cancer is a metabolic process and PET is a metabolic imaging technique.

PET shows the extent of disease – called staging – of lung cancer, colorectal cancer, melanoma, head and neck cancer, breast cancer, lymphoma and many other cancers.

For patients whose cancer is newly diagnosed, it is important to determine if cancer has spread to other parts of the body so that appropriate treatment can be started.

PET can search the entire body for cancer in a single examination with a “whole-body scan,” revealing the primary site (s) as well as any metastases.

PET shows whether a tumor is benign or malignant. Reports in scientific literature find that, in some tumors, PET correctly identifies detected lesions 95% of the time. Painful, costly and invasive surgery, such as thoracotomy, may no longer be necessary for diagnosis.

PET shows the effectiveness of therapy. It is an excellent way to monitor progress and test the recurrence of the disease.

For example, an ovarian cancer patient with a blood test that indicated a rise in her tumor marker levels had a PET scan after both CT and MRI scans were still registering no cancer.

Only the PET scan showed new cancer. After treatment, a subsequent PET scan revealed that the cancer was gone.