This report originally appeared in the June 2010 issue of DOTmed Business News
The situation was getting desperate. Neither the MRI nor the CT scan revealed any abnormalities. All of the lab tests came back negative maintaining the mystery behind the patient's illness. The patient was sent to the Columbia Kreitchman PET Center in New York for a PET/CT scan. The anomaly was finally discovered and biopsied.
With its exceptional diagnostic capabilities, it's no wonder that PET/CT was one of the largest growing imaging modalities worldwide last year. According to a recent report from Espicom, an international market research firm, the molecular imaging market is currently worth about $5 billion, with $2.5 billion of that generated in North America. However, it has not been easy for the PET industry.
"We've certainly seen some challenging market conditions over the last year," says Scott Smith, senior product manager of PET for Philips Healthcare. "We're starting to see perhaps a glimmer of recovery, we've seen that stronger outside the United States, particularly in emerging markets than we have in the U.S. It's been challenging because the U.S. has been hit with a double whammy of the general downturn in the economy as well as uncertainty about health care reform."
The rough economic climate was coupled with the continuous concern of decreasing reimbursement rates.
"The problem is Medicare has identified the cost of advanced medical imaging is going up faster than the cost of medical care in general in the United States and they view this with alarm," says Dr. Michael Graham, president of the Society of Nuclear Medicine (SNM) and professor of radiology and director of nuclear medicine at the University of Iowa. "Their approach to trying to rein this back is to decrease reimbursement, which is not a very focused tool for the task. This is not a scalpel, this is a sledgehammer. It is definitely having an inhibitory effect and I think it's decreasing the number of studies," he says.
Inappropriate utilization is a contributing factor to this trend, an issue that is of much concern in the industry. Imaging societies like SNM are looking for ways to decrease inappropriate utilization and increase the appropriate studies that make a difference in patient management and outcomes, says Dr. Graham.
Barriers to new agents
Fludeoxyglucose or FDG is a widely used radiopharmaceutical in PET and PET/CT studies. However, FDG has its limitations, spurring an interest in the approval of new agents.
