RESTON, Va. -- "PET/CT in Cancer Patient Management" is the subject of a special supplement to the January issue of the Journal of Nuclear Medicine. SNM, the largest molecular imaging and nuclear medicine association, is publishing a unique collection of articles that explores the role of 18F-FDG PET/CT imaging in patient screening, cancer diagnosis, initial treatment planning, treatment monitoring and detection of early recurrence.

"Oncologists, internists, general practitioners, radiologists and nuclear medicine physicians are frequently overwhelmed by the need to select--from among the different imaging modalities--the one that best serves the needs of their patients," notes the supplement's guest editor Johannes Czernin, the director of the Nuclear Medicine Clinic and professor and vice chair of molecular and medical pharmacology at the University of California, Los Angeles. "Despite the impressive growth of PET/CT, there is no consensus on the optimum clinical use of PET/CT and its implementation into patient management," he added, thereby prompting the publication of this exceptional resource.

"Selecting the 'best' PET/CT protocol for a given clinical problem adds another layer of complexity for referring physicians and practicing imaging specialists who need to avoid redundancies in diagnostic tests that frequently involve radiation," said Heinrich Schelbert, who is editor in chief of JNM, the most prominent peer-reviewed journal in nuclear medicine, molecular imaging and allied disciplines.

Doctors use positron emission tomography (PET) and computed tomography (CT) scans as standard imaging tools to pinpoint disease states in the body. When PET is used to image cancer, a radiopharmaceutical (such as fluorodeoxyglucose or FDG, which includes both a sugar and a radionuclide) is injected into a patient. Cancer cells metabolize sugar at higher rates than normal cells, and the radiopharmaceutical is drawn in higher concentrations
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Contact: Maryann Verrillo
mverrillo@snm.org
703-652-6773
Society of Nuclear Medicine
2-Jan-2007