PET Technologists May Scan Cancer Patients Sooner
This blog is now focused on laboratory specialties. This article is here for your information only, as jobs are longer provided for any radiation technician specialties.
Positron Emission Tomography (PET) scanning is normally done on lung cancer patients after the radiation treatment has been completed in order to see how the cancer reacted to the treatment. This allows the doctors to better understand the patient’s possible outcome and how likely it is that the radiation will get rid of the cancer.
However, it was recently shown by researchers at the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center that PET scanning can be done sooner to facilitate better outcomes. When a PET technologist does the scan after only a few weeks of radiation treatment, the doctor can use that scan then to see if the tumor has responded and feel confident that from that scan he/she can predict the outcome of the treatment plan they have begun. If the doctor sees that the outcome will not be favorable, they have a chance to draw up a new treatment plan because it is still so early in the treatment process.
The reason that PET scans have not been done sooner before now is that it was assumed that normal lung tissue wold react to the radiation and have a “confounding effect” causing the PET scan to not clearly show whether the tumor was shrinking. In fact, the opposite was found to be true through this research. It was found that this confounding effect was actually greater after treatment than during. So, a PET scan performed sooner will actually be a more useful image, as well as being more useful because it is done sooner.
Despite these interesting and encouraging results, it is still not known how helpful changing the treatment plan after seeing a discouraging PET scan will be. The researchers are now working on this next piece of the puzzle. If they find that lung cancer outcomes can actually be improved using this method, perhaps the standard guidelines will change for the better as a result.
Learn about hiring a PET Technologist.
Source:
- (2008) PET Scan Shows During Treatment If Radiation Is Shrinking Lung Tumor. Medical News Today http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/77241.php
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Very well written and informative. Thanks!