ABSTRACT
CLINICAL APPLICATIONS PET scanning can be used for accurate initial staging of cancer, early prediction of response to treatment, evaluation of residual masses, in biopsy planning, in radiotherapy planning, and to establish suspected disease recurrence (Table 16.1). In a review of our 10-year experience at Guy’s and St Thomas’ Clinical PET Centre, PET altered the management of 24 percent of children with cancer (Wegner et al., 2005). This is comparable with management changes due to a PET scan seen in adults with cancer (30 percent) (Gambhir et al., 2001). The referring clinicians considered PET to be helpful in 75 percent of the pediatric cases scanned, even if the results did not lead to management change. In these cases PET was considered ‘helpful’ because it confirmed clinical suspicion, clarified equivocal results of other studies, confirmed the need for further treatment or guided biopsy (Wegner et al., 2005). Krasin et al. (2004) argue that the PET scan can be used to modify the radiation dose and the volume of radiotherapy field in children with cancer.
