“The cancer miracle isn’t a cure, it’s prevention”, according to the Harvard Public Health Journal. The cure for cancer and many other diseases is preventing them in time, acting while the diseases are in their early stages of development, and doing all the necessary measures to control the spread of the diseases.
In 2019, according to the American Cancer Society, an estimated 1,762,450 people were diagnosed with cancer in the United States and an estimated 606,880 died of the disease. Those numbers could have been drastically different and lower had most people known of the diseases earlier and jumped on a treatment plan immediately. The problem is a multilayered one; the fault goes to the patients, as regular check-ups every six months to a year should be standard; yet for many, they are not! Thankfully, with the technology available today, such as CT and PET scans, we’re one step closer to making them more accessible to a larger number of patients and to discovering and treating diseases on time.
In the text below, we’ll discuss how PET/CT scans impact the diagnosis of the diseases and how they help prevent and manage the diseases later on.
Enhanced Diagnostic Accuracy
The possibilities PET and CT scans offer in diagnosing potential diseases and illnesses are extraordinary. PET scans read the metabolic and biochemical functions of the organs and tissues. The PET scan uses a radioactive drug, called a tracer, to detect any atypical metabolism functions and activity. The tracer fluid, injected in your vein, often collects into areas of the body with higher metabolic activity (cancer cells), which the PET scan picks up and pinpoints. It shows them as bright spots, allowing doctors to find out about a disease or any unusual activity in your body ahead of time. It’s used to detect any growth of lymph nodes in the body, maybe unusual brain activity, or any form of metabolic function out of the ordinary but mostly to detect cancer cells and whether they’ve been spreading. A CT scan gives your doctor a great picture of your body’s internal structure and can show if there are any abnormalities. Both PET and CT scans can show doctors the early signs of a disease and its stage.
Early Detection of Cancer
“Advances in biomarker testing could help us better risk-stratify the population,” says Jane Kim, professor of health decision science at the Harvard Chan School. The new technology allows us to mark cancer cells more efficiently and effectively than ever before. Recently, cancer would only be detected once it’s big enough to appear on traditional imaging tools. That often meant the cancer would easily spread or had already spread to nearby organs, lowering the chances of an effective treatment. New markers, such as PET and CT scans, give a precise image of any possible cancer cells. This type of early detection is vital for an early treatment plan, as doctors can act fast and precisely to combat the cancer and stop its spread to other parts of the body. This means a higher survival rate and a lower remission chance.
Improved Staging and Treatment Planning
“Advances in biomarker testing could help us better risk-stratify the population,” says Jane Kim, meaning we could control a wider number of the population and the risk of a cancer epidemic while providing treatment plans for patients who are suffering from cancer in its early stages. Accurate staging of cancer is essential for determining the most appropriate treatment strategy.
PET/CT provides detailed information about the extent of disease spread (metastasis). It helps oncologists assess whether cancer has spread to the lymph nodes or other organs. Soon, some of these tests will become an annual thing for most, but if you’re having any doubts about your overall well-being, you can always search for CT imaging near me and find the best-equipped laboratories and hospitals providing the service of PET and CT scans. Early detection gives your doctor a chance to tailor a comprehensive treatment plan, whether it’s surgery, radiation therapy, chemotherapy, or a combination of these modalities. With the help of PET and CT scans in the fight against deadly diseases, we can lower mortality rates drastically and help many.
Monitoring Treatment Response
The three stages of combating any disease are: discovering it, treating it, and tracking and monitoring its progress over time. With cancer and similar illnesses that tend to come back, monitoring and tracking the recovery path is crucial for preventing remission.
With the help of regular PET and CT scans, it’s never been easier. It’s not only about monitoring the aftereffects; it’s also about keeping an eye on the treatment response itself, as often doctors can detect early on that a patient is not responding well to a specific treatment, meaning they might opt to change it or replace it altogether. This ability to assess treatment response at a metabolic level enables oncologists to make timely adjustments to treatment plans, such as changing chemotherapy drugs if the current regimen is ineffective. This form of dynamic monitoring helps avoid completely unnecessary side effects.
Broader Applications Beyond Oncology
The versatility of PET and CT scans beyond standardized cancer studies and treatments is often wildly neglected and opens a completely new door. PET/CT is valuable in the diagnosis and management of neurological conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease, epilepsy, and Parkinson’s disease. It can also be used in cardiology to assess myocardial viability and detect areas of the heart muscle that have been damaged by ischemia. As we learn more and more about the diseases themselves, how they progress, what’s causing them, and how they’re connected to the body, we learn about new ways of diagnosing these diseases with the tools we have available at the moment.
“We will always need good treatments,” says Timothy Rebbeck, and for good reason. We’ve come a long way since our humble beginnings, and medicine now makes it possible for us to have a true and real insight into the inner workings of the human body. We understand the nature of many illnesses and how they can be treated but we still struggle to pinpoint the reasons why they’re happening in the first place. Nevertheless, with the help of innovations such as PET and CT scans, the why might not be as important as the how, meaning early detection allows us to consider how to cure the disease on time rather than asking why it happened in the first place.
