Clinical Applications of P.E.T. in Oncology

Speakers

• Dr Simon Sutcliffe: CEO, BC Cancer Agency
• Dr Peter Conti, MD: Associate Professor of Radiology, Clinical Pharmacy and Biomedical Engineering USC
• Dr Paul Shreve, MD: Assistant Professor, Internal Medicine, University of Michigan Medical Center
• Dr Richard Baum, PhD: Chairman PET Centre, Zentralklinik, Bad Berka, Germany

---

Dr Sutcliffe: We are going to discuss the three sites that have been under discussion, that is CNS tumours, breast cancer and pediatric cancers. I think on the issue of CNS cancer there were clear there were two circumstances I believe that Paul recommended.

• The first being clearly recurrence versus necrosis as being a clear indication for the use of PET.
• Secondly: the use of PET to identify a site for biopsy, if it is not apparent on other imaging modalities. Those would appear to be the only two indications that were put forward at the present moment.

Dr Shreve: Yes you might want to expand that it is not apparent on other modalities because those patients will have an abnormal CT or MRI, it is really a question of where you are most likely to get the highest grade of tissue. So it depends on the size of the mass and on the location I think.

Dr Sutcliffe: Any further comment on that from other speakers or from the floor?

Dr Conti: I thought maybe you might want to rephrase that latter one because you might want to just consider in treatment planning or in biopsy guidance to make it more generic as opposed to presence or absence of modality findings.

Dr Baum: I would add grading which is very difficult in some cases as shown and one should not only look at FDG one has to include the amino acids like C11-Methionine or we use F18-Tyrosine. It is really very useful and very often requested to decide if to do aggressive therapy or just to wait and see so that is a very important clinical point.