Originally published February 8 2006
New scanner technology improves doctors' ability to track the spread of cancer cells
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
At Northwest Community Hospital in Arlington Heights, Ill., radiologist Peter Cormier assesses the impact of new CT/PET scanners on cancer treatment and diagnosis.
A new generation of medical scanners is helping doctors quickly determine if cancer cells have spread - and where.
The technology illuminates cancer cells as if they were tiny neon signs, helping to improve the outcome for patients as well as cut treatment costs.
The new scanners - which are actually a combination of two existing technologies - are gaining acceptance across the nation.
The machines, known as CT/PET scanners, are a combination of a device that makes X-ray images of a patient's anatomy - computerized axial tomography, or CT - and scanners that produce images of metabolic activity, called positron emission tomography, or PET.
The patient ingests sugars tied to radio isotopes before the image is made, and the scanner captures the radiation given off, highlighting cells that metabolize sugar at a furious rate.
In deciding how to treat cancer, getting a precise diagnosis, or staging the disease, can be extremely important, said Reid Perlman, medical director of nuclear medicine for Evanston Northwestern Healthcare.
In newly diagnosed lung tumors that appear amenable to surgery, 15 to 20 percent aren't operable, the CT/PET images show, because the disease has spread, Perlman said.
Evidence that CT/PET scanning saves money and improves care has led the federal Medicare program to reimburse hospitals that use it for cancer staging, Perlman said, helping to further spread the technology.
"Gleevec works in about three out of 10 patients who have this condition," said Michael Reitermann, president of Hoffman Estates-based Siemens Medical Solutions USA Inc. molecular imaging.
To boost the technology's usefulness the industry needs to devise other molecules besides the FDG that is so useful in tracing sugar metabolism.
California researchers have created a microchip that should speed this process, said Michael Phelps, director of the Institute for Molecular Medicine at the University of California at Los Angeles.
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