Hi Gina,
I had a PET scan to diagnose a recurrence of lung cancer. Of course I'm not
a medical professional, but here's what I know and what the experience was like:
Unlike a CAT scan which is an anatomical picture of your body (or the
relevant parts that they're interested in...), the PET scan is a
METABOLIC picture of your body. They first inject you with a substance that
includes glucose and some radioactive material. The picture that they are
going to take measures how quickly the glucose is being metabolized by your
body. The radioactive stuff is a tracer so they can detect it in the scan.
The cancer cells metabolize more glucose because they're growing and
multiplying faster.
After the injection (which doesn't hurt) Then you wait quietly for 30
minutes in the waiting room, without talking. If you talk then your throat
will pick up more activity and it will give a false positive in the throat
and mouth area. Then they have you lie down on the gurney-like thing and you
go into a tube, head first. Whereas CAT scans are pretty quick, the picture
they take with a PET scan takes a lot longer. I had to lie there perfectly
still for 40 minutes, then I could get up for 20 minutes, then lie back down
for 45 minutes. They played good music and you kind of drift off mentally.
The "tube" they put you in is pretty small and I am a large lady, so I just
barely fit. That made it pretty hard to get comfortable. There are some men
whose shoulders are too broad to fit in the machine...Occasionally they
would move thegurney automatically back and forth to scan different areas.
The resulting picture covers most or all of your body (mine was from top of
my head to my knees, but they also do the Whole Body some times) and any
malignancies that are as large as .5 cm (i.e. half a centimeter) will
"light up" on the picture. It is 90% accurate either way...i.e. you have a
10% chance of a false negative or a false positive result.
Also, it is somewhat less accurate for detecting any brain malignancies,
because of how the brain NORMALLY metabolizes glucose (it creates some
"static" for the picture, but it can still detect brain tumors.
Some providers consider it experimental but it is becoming more widely
accepted. Costs between $1500 and $2500 per scan and must be done near a
linear accelerator.....From what I have read it is MOST useful when there is
also a CAT scan. That way, they can compare the two and have a more complete
understanding of the exact dimensions of the thing...(if there's a thing at
all...)
Hope this helps.
Torie
At 11:04 PM 10/1/98 EDT, you wrote:
>could someone please help me, has anyone had a pet scan? if so was it for
>colon cancer? and could you please tell me more thank you Gina.
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