www.rt-image.com/Room_to_Grow_PET_CT_for_pediatric_canc -
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Published on: 6/13/2008
Last Visited: 6/13/2008
Peter Anderson, MD, PhD, a specialist in the field of solid tumors at the Children's Cancer Hospital at The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, first began to use PET/CT in the late 1990s while working at the Rochester, Minn.-based Mayo Clinic.
The Children's Cancer Hospital at M. D. Anderson currently performs between 10 to 15 PET/CT procedures per week for pediatric cancer patients.It began to be used for pediatric patients in 2003.
"PET/CT is phenomenally useful in certain situations for children with sarcomas, neuroblastomas, and lymphomas.You can tell whether patients are responding to chemotherapy and whether the disease is localized or not.Often, for patients with Hodgkin's disease, the positive results of a mass shrinking and good metabolic response shown on a PET/CT may be the first good news that you can give the family," Anderson says.
He continues, "The images allow you to explain the disease process much better than with images from other modalities, particularly with respect to showing metastases.It is a great teaching tool."
Anderson says that the images are also extremely useful for surgeons and radiotherapists to determine the site of local control.The PET/CT also helps justify when chemotherapy is no longer effective and surgery is necessary.
Anderson also says that PET/CT is very useful in showing areas of the body that are hard to image, such as the mediastinum, and determining when a patient has metal in their body, such as after limb salvage, since metal often causes artifacts on CTs or MRIs.