PET/CT and Breast Cancer Diagnosis and treatment

If breast cancer is found early, quick treatment could save a patients life. If a lesion is found and it is questionable whether or not it is malignant, then PET/CT Scanning may help.

Mammograms are the most commonly used method to x-ray the breast. During a mammogram, the breast is pressed between two plates for a few seconds while pictures are taken. The current standard relies on physical examination, mammography and/or ultrasound, and fine needle aspiration to diagnose a breast cancer.

PET/CT can show whether or not a lump in the breast is benign (non-cancerous) or malignant (cancerous) and can be very useful in addition to mammography. Patients with breast implants, dense breasts, and others may benefit from having a PET/CT scan to help look for a lesion in the breast. In fact PET/CT scanning is 94% successful in detecting breast cancer, compared to the 44% success rate of mammography.

If breast cancer is diagnosed most doctors will determine what kind it is, by looking at a sample of the tumor under a microscope, however this alone does not determine what treatment options are available.

Before treatment, your doctors must determine if or how much the breast cancer has spread, a process called staging the cancer. This is important as your recovery and your treatment options, which may include surgery, radiation therapy or chemotherapy, depend upon the stage of the cancer.

If breast cancer is found and treated before it has spread to lymph nodes or other organs, a five-year survival rate of 98% is typical. Early diagnosis and treatment is therefore critical for breast cancer.

PET/CT scanning is the most useful non-invasive test that you can have when doctors are staging or re-staging breast cancer because it is more accurate any other test in finding local or distant disease

A PET/CT scan can have a major impact on your physician’s diagnosis of a the breast cancer, and the necessary treatment plan that needs to be developed and managed.

The beauty of the PET/CT scanner is that it allows both CT and PET images to be collected with a constant scanner geometry and minimal delay between the two acquisitions. This prevents motion and time delay problems that were one of the main reasons for the development of the PET/CT scanner.