Colorectal Cancer Management Aided with PET
A report in the current issue of the Journal of Nuclear Medicine details the benefits of PET utilization in patients with colorectal cancer. The findings reported that evaluation with this imaging modality most often changes decisions regarding patient management.
An Australian based team conducted research at four different sites, recruiting a total of 191 patients. Patients were placed into two different groups. The first group included those patients who were symptomatic and had residual structural lesions suspicious for recurrent disease after an initial round of treatment. The second patient group included those with hepatic or pulmonary metastases that were considered operable.
The team compared PET scanning with conventional imaging and followed patients for twelve months. Of particular interest was the progression and extent of disease of disease. This information was utilized to determine treatment and compared to treatment plans formulated by clinicians blinded to PET findings. An additional endpoint considered was the result of changes in disease management on disease-free survival.
The average age of patients was 66 and the majority of participants were male. In the first group of patients, information gleaned from PET changed treatment plans over 65 percent of the time. In the second group of patients, data from PET modified treatment plans more than half the time.
Additional information gleaned from the PET studies included disease sites previously unidentified. Almost half of the patients in the first group had new disease sites identified and 44 percent of patients in the second group, those with metastases, had new areas of malignancy noted.
The research team thus concluded that PET should be made more widely available for patients with colorectal cancer.
September 3, 2008 Related topics: Imaging, Diagnostic