Hi!
My dad had surgery in January 2013, had great margins but had to do two rounds of adjuvant chemo after surgery. He just finished one chemo round in early March and scheduled for his last one in April 2013. His oncologist would like to order a pet/ct scan after he completes that last chemo session. That would be about 3 months post surgery and probably one week after he finished his last chemo session. I am debating on advising my dad to delay the petscan and just doing a ct scan given that the pet scan can show false positives. He is still in recuperating mode from his surgery so I expect there would be some inflammatory that would show up on the petscan. I just don't want unnecessary worry if not needed and maybe wait a few more months when his body has finally recoop from surgery and the last chemo session. Your thoughts would be greatly appreciated!
Reply # - March 25, 2013, 05:33 PM
Reply To: Petscan after surgery and adjuvant chemo?
Hello hope, I'm happy to hear your dad is recouping and managing chemo. Dr. West has been pretty clear on his views about assessing treatment with today's technology. Here is a link that addresses this as well there are several appropriate links at the end of his discussion. As far as fighting your battles you must pick which ones are important. For me I discussed the use of CT's vs PETs with my husband's onc to no avail. Of course I could have pushed for a CT instead of PET but I didn't. However there's also a matter of economics that points to CT instead of PETs also.
Don't hesitate to ask followup questions and keep us posted,
Janine
forum moderator
http://cancergrace.org/cancer-101/2010/09/16/cancer-101-faq-assessment-…
Reply # - March 25, 2013, 09:40 PM
Reply To: Petscan after surgery and adjuvant chemo?
I don't think that a PET scan after surgery is awful, but it's not the standard approach, and my preference in this setting is to do a CT scan and only pursue a PET scan if there are ambiguous findings on CT.
-Dr. West