Contributing to patient management
Traditionally, lung masses have been evaluated with chest x-rays, CT and,
more recently, MR; invasive biopsy techniques and thoracotomies have then
been applied to determine malignancy.
PET has demonstrated extraordinary utility for diagnosing and staging this disease.
Once a solitary pulmonary nodule has been identified, PET can determine its
malignancy simply and non-invasively. As a result, using PET can greatly reduce
the number of benign nodules that are resected, thereby minimizing the number of thoracotomies
performed and sparing patients needless cost and pain.
PET also makes valuable contributions in staging patients for mediastinal or distant metastases.
When used for this purpose, PET frequently results in a change in disease staging, and therefore
treatment plans can be modified to improve their effectiveness.
In addition, PET takes advantage of the fact that glucose metabolism rapidly exhibits changes
in response to chemotherapy and/or radiation therapy. By quickly determining whether the patient
is responding, a particular course of treatment can be modified promptly to both improve outcomes and
avoid the expense of ineffective therapy.
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