Oncologist and NOPR working group co-chair, Anthony Shields, MD, professor of medicine and oncology at the Karmanos Cancer Institute at Wayne State University and chair of ACRIN's Oncology Committee says of the research results, "These results confirm what we suspected from increasing experience with PET. However, we lacked the significant data required to prove the benefit of PET for many uncovered indications. It's very encouraging that oncologists and other clinicians may have access to the valuable information PET affords for ensuring the best patient care."

NOPR has formally asked CMS to reconsider the current National Coverage decision on FDG-PET to end the data collection requirements for diagnosis, staging and restaging. Medicare will review the published data and determine the next steps related to reimbursement for PET scans now only covered through the NOPR. Barry Siegel, MD, FACR, professor of radiology and chief of the Division of Nuclear Medicine at the Mallinckrodt Institute of Radiology at Washington University and chair of ACRIN's PET Imaging Core Laboratory, also serves as an NOPR working group co-chair. "Based on these data, Medicare should strongly consider opening up the coverage to include diagnosis, staging and restaging for all cancers," states Dr. Siegel.


FDG-PET, also called PET imaging or PET scan, is a test that images the function of cells to show differences between healthy tissue and diseased tissue. It uses a small amount of a radioactive chemical which is combined with sugar. This combination is called FDG, so the test is sometimes called an FDG-PET scan. It is used to evaluate various neurological and cardiac disorders, as well as for diagnosing, staging, and monitoring the treatment of many different cancers.

The ACR and ACRIN worked to develop the NOPR in collaboration with registry sponsor, the Academy for Molecular Imaging since CMS announced its intent to support a PET registry in January 2005. The American Society of Clinical Oncology and the Society for Nuclear Medicine also have played key roles in guiding the project's development.

For more information about the NOPR please visit www.cancerpetregistry.org.

For more information about positron emission tomography (PET), please visit www.radiologyinfo.org.

Study data from the National Oncologic PET Registry was published online March 24 in the Journal of Clinical Oncology (JCO).

The American College of Radiology Imaging Network (ACRIN) is a National Cancer Institute Clinical Trials Cooperative Group with operations headquartered in Philadelphia, PA and the ACRIN Biostatistics Center located at Brown University in Providence, RI. ACRIN is made up of investigators from over 100 academic and community-based medical facilities in North America and several abroad. ACRIN's mission is to conduct clinical trials of medical imaging that will result in: 1) the earlier diagnosis of cancer, 2) allaying the concerns of those who do not have cancer, and 3 ) extending the length and improving the quality of lives of cancer patients.

More Industry Headlines