A few years ago, Medhat Osman, M.D., Ph.D., had a patient who was scanned due to a suspicion of lung cancer using positron emission tomography (PET) and computer tomography (CT) technology. The scan came back negative, but the patient then complained of a problem with his leg.
Osman, director of PET Imaging at Saint Louis University Hospital and assistant professor of nuclear medicine at Saint Louis University School of Medicine, opted to try a "true whole body scan" on the patient to evaluate his condition.
"We decided to scan his legs and detected a completely different type of malignancy that would have been missed had we had not done a true whole body scan," Osman says.
Osman and colleagues at Saint Louis University are pushing for national changes in the way PET imaging scans are performed after determining that as much as 8 percent of cancerous legions occur outside of the current imaging field. His results will be presented during the June 18-22 Society of Nuclear Medicine conference in Toronto.
Osman says medical institutions need to recognize the limitations of scanning equipment and change imaging protocols so that a patient can be screened for medical conditions from head to toe, such as cancer.
Kathleen Kiske, 50, is one of the patients in the initial clinical studies. Diagnosed with melanoma in her torso, the south St. Louis County resident underwent chemotherapy, radiation therapy and endured multiple surgeries. As she fought back from her disease, she underwent a true whole-body scan at Saint Louis University Hospital. No malignancies were found in her torso, but the scan showed a single, clear malignancy in her knee.
"That scan and the ones I have had done every four months since then have kept me alive," says Kiske. "They have found malignancies when we weren't even looking for them and in places where we didn't realize there was a problem."
Kiske has battled cancer recurrences four times. By catching her malignancies early and treating them aggressively, Kiske now has been tumor-free for almost two years.
Osman's success with the new PET imaging protocol has been presented at multiple medical conferences, including the Radiologic Society of North America, the Society of Nuclear Medicine, the Academy of Nuclear Imaging and the European Society of Nuclear Medicine.
"With the clinical results we have had at Saint Louis University Hospital, the future is clear," says Osman. "True whole-body scans with the advanced PET/CT system enable us to better diagnose and treat cancer. I think that the new true whole body PET/CT protocol that we've been testing will become the standard for all PET centers because of its noninvasive nature, large field of view, accuracy, ease of use, speed and patient comfort."