Over 90 Total Lots Up For Auction at One Location - WA 04/08

PET/CT Scans May Help Detect Recurring Prostate Cancer Earlier

by Barbara Kram, Editor | September 02, 2009
This study was
published in the
September issue of
The Journal of Nuclear
Medicine
RESTON, Va. - A new study published in the September issue of The Journal of Nuclear Medicine shows that positron emission tomography (PET)/computer tomography (CT) scans with the imaging agent choline could detect recurring prostate cancer sooner than conventional imaging technologies in some patients who have had their prostates surgically removed. In addition, the journal also includes a paper that provides a broader examination of new agents and techniques for imaging prostate cancer, which accounts for 10 percent of all cancer-related deaths in the United States and is the most common type of cancer among men.

Many men diagnosed with prostate cancer choose to have a radical prostatectomy, which involves surgical removal of the entire gland and surrounding tissue. However, prostate cancer recurs within five years in as many as 30 percent of these patients. Physicians monitor patients who have undergone the procedure by checking levels of prostate-specific antigen (PSA) in the blood. If PSA is detected after radical prostatectomy-known as biochemical relapse-then imaging techniques are essential to determine whether and exactly where in the body the cancer has recurred. The study examined PET/CT scans with radioactively labeled choline-a promising molecular imaging tool which has been shown to be more accurate than conventional imaging techniques such as CT, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and bone scintigraphy in detecting recurrent prostate cancer.

"In most patients with biochemical relapse after radical prostatectomy, conventional imaging methods often return false-negative results, meaning that the imaging techniques fail to detect cancer that is present in the body," said Paolo Castellucci, M.D., of the nuclear medicine unit, hematology-oncology and laboratory medicine department, Azienda Ospedaliero-Universitaria di Bologna Policlinico S. Orsola-Malpghi, University of Bologna, Italy, and lead author of the study. "Our study found that for some patients, PET/CT with choline can improve the detection of cancer soon after PSA levels are measured. This enables physicians to tailor treatment to individual patients in the early stages of recurrence, thus increasing their chances of recovery."

The study included a total of 190 patients who had undergone radical prostatectomy and showed biochemical relapse in followup examinations. These patients were grouped according to PSA levels and studied with choline PET/CT scans. In addition, researchers also factored in PSA kinetic factors such as velocity-or the rate at which PSA levels change-and the PSA doubling time for each patient.