An open house held Wednesday, June 21, introduced medical personnel and members of the community to a mobile PET/CT scanner that is available each Wednesday at Adventist Health Redbud Community Hospital.
The new technology enables doctors to more accurately detect cancer and pinpoint its exact location in the body. Communications and Marketing Coordinator Diane LeBrun noted on Wednesday that Redbud is the only hospital in Lake County with this new technology.
PET technician Terre Stevens said that the scanner is used for “staging,” or identifying the degree to which a cancer has spread; and “restaging,” that is, seeing how cancer responds to treatment. Stevens added that the entire process takes about two hours.
Assisted by LeBrun, who enacted the role of a patient, Stevens demonstrated the scanner”s use. A sliding platform moves the reclining patient inside a large, cylindrical area that houses the image-taking technology. Superimposed PET (positron emission tomography) and CT (computed tomography) images appear on a computer screen within the mobile trailer. Doctors can also access images via a work station that is inside the hospital. Operators can examine the image types separately as well as see them superimposed.
Hospital officials noted that both CT and the newer PET have added valuable dimensions to cancer diagnosis, but each has limitations. A CT scan is a series of X-rays taken sequentially along the length of the body, producing images that resemble cross sections of organs and other structures. CT gives sharp views of anatomical features and differentiates between types of soft tissue, bone and blood vessels. The technique reveals lesions, tumors and metastases.
PET scans, meanwhile, focus more on how structures behave than on how they look. The patient is injected with a radioactive glucose that is allowed to circulate throughout the body, a process that takes about 45 minutes. The PET scan can then detect how rapidly tissues are consuming the sugar that fuels biological growth.
Cancerous tissue consumes sugar at a high rate, which shows up on PET scans as bright areas. PET can distinguish between dead scar tissue and active cancer and detect cancers at a smaller, earlier stage than CT.
When PET and CT images are superimposed together, the CT provides physical landmarks for precisely locating PET findings.
“To see the precision of detail in the cancer location, this is the best,” said radiologist Dr. David Racker, adding that the superimposed images are very straightforward with the “areas of importance” displayed in bright color. Diagnosis of what is or is not cancer will now take “minutes compared to days,” according to Dr. Racker, thanks to this state-of-the-art detection scanning.
Racker added that before the development of the combined PET/CT scanner several years ago, patients would have a CT scan on one machine and a PET scan on another. When superimposing the images in order to view the combined results, the doctor would have to make adjustments for any differences in scale or alignment because they were taken with two different machines.
Operation of the mobile PET/CT scanner is a joint venture between Adventist Health and Radiology Corporation of America. The scanner is stationed each day at a different Adventist Health facility: Mondays at St. Helena Hospital, Tuesdays at Ukiah Valley Medical Center, Wednesdays at Redbud Hospital and Thursdays at Feather River Hospital in Paradise.
Redbud Hospital President and CEO Carrie Luyster said, “Having this state of the art technology in a mobile configuration allows Redbud to meet community needs by offering a state-of-the-art exam to patients in our region, which is otherwise only offered at larger, metropolitan hospitals.”
Patients are referred by their physicians to receive PET/CT scanning. Richard Bodine, western region education specialist for Adventist Health Medical Imaging, said that a study is presently under way to examine the effectiveness of patient management with the use of PET scans. Bodine said the doctor and the patient must both give their permission in order for a patient”s records to be included in the study. Results will be used to develop guidelines for the use of PET scanning, as well as to request Medicare and Medicaid coverage of PET scans for cancer types and indications that are not presently covered by these programs.
For more information on PET/CT scanning, please contact your physician.
Contact Cynthia Parkhill at cparkhill@clearlakeobserver.com.
