Highly accurate test reveals recurring prostate cancer

After being treated for prostate cancer, some men will experience a rise in PSA levels suggesting that new tumors lurk somewhere in the body. Finding these tiny cancerous deposits before they grow and spread any further is crucially important. But it’s also a challenge, since the budding tumors might be too small to see with standard tools such as magnetic resonance imaging. Now scientists in California have published results with an experimental imaging technique that detects recurring prostate cancer with the best accuracy reported yet. Importantly, some of the unveiled tumors were “still curable with targeted radiation therapy,” said Dr. Thomas Hope, a radiologist at the University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine, who led the study. “That’s what makes the research so exciting.” How the test works The technique used in the study is a modified form of positron emission tomography, or PET scanning. When performing a PET scan, doctors will first give an intravenous injection of a harmless radioactive tracer that travels through the bloodstream and attaches to proteins on cancer cells. The PET scanning technology detects this radiation, and thus allows specially trained experts to see where the cancer cells are located. Two tracers have been approved so far by the FDA for use in prostate cancer diagnostics: one called choline C11 and another called fluciclovine-18-F. Dr. Hope’s team, however, used an alternative tracer called gallium-68, which has ...
Source: Harvard Health Blog - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Living With Prostate Cancer HPK Source Type: blogs