PET better at finding recurrences.(positron emission tomography)(breast cancer)(Brief Article)

2002 APR 4 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) -- Positron emission tomography (PET) imaging can reassure previously treated women they are breast cancer-free, and can better predict if their disease is likely to recur than other types of diagnostic imaging, according to researchers.

The study, published in the March 2002 issue of the Journal of Nuclear Medicine, compared the outcomes of 61 women previously treated for breast cancer. The women received both 18F-FDG PET and conventional imaging (CI), and were followed-up for at least 6 months to determine how, or if, their disease progressed.

Significantly, all six women with positive CI results, indicating their disease had returned, but whose PET scans were negative, were free of disease at last follow-up. In the nine women with negative CI but positive PET results, six were later found to have recurrent disease and received additional treatment. Overall, PET and CI findings differed in a quarter of the women; PET correctly predicted the outcome in 80% of these cases versus 20% for CI.

PET was also better at determining the length of disease-free survival, with 90% accuracy versus 75% for CI. Women with positive results for both PET and CI showed similar periods of survival; however, women with negative PET ...