petscan

rockchicksurvivor
rockchicksurvivor Member Posts: 45
edited March 2014 in Ovarian Cancer #1
Hi I recently had my first petscan and was wondering if anyone has ever had anything light up that was not cancer? I am now back on carboplatin/taxotere due what was seen on the scan! I knew something was up by the way I had/have been feeling. I hope I can beat this again cause going from the chemo I was just on for 8 months right into the harder stuff has already worn me out with side effects and I just started!!!

Comments

  • newhopechurchli
    newhopechurchli Member Posts: 126
    #2
    My doctor said...
    My doctor doesn't give petscans that often. She believes in using catscans because the petscan show alot of false positives. So I would have to say that yes... other things can show up! Hope that helps you. :)
  • lindaprocopio
    lindaprocopio Member Posts: 1,980
    #3
    newhopechurchli said:

    My doctor said...
    My doctor doesn't give petscans that often. She believes in using catscans because the petscan show alot of false positives. So I would have to say that yes... other things can show up! Hope that helps you. :)

    How big was the spot that lit up?
    Pet scans are very accurate at lighting up tumors that are cancerous that are larger than 1 cm. But I read that when the tumor is smaller than 1 cm, the false-positive rate can be as high as 45%. So if the spots that lit up as less than 10mm, you may want a needle biopsy to confirm the malignancy before rushing back into chemo. But if they are larger than 1cm (= 10 mm) you can be fairly confident in the accuracy of the PET. I think it's 97% accurate, or something like that, on tumors greater than 1 cm in diagnosing malignancy. That being said, if you didn't know to not eat any carbohydrates 24 hours before the PET, or if you did any very vigorous physical activity within 24 hours of the scan, that can throw off your scan. & bowel irritation will almost always light up on a PET, although they know to disregard that.

    My oncologist said that false positives can happen on very small tumors, but that false negatives are rare and so told me to BELIEVE in a CLEAR Pet scan whenever I get one! I've done chemo based on just a PET scan and a spike in CA125 when it was impossible to safely get a needle biopsy of all the nodes that lit up. But I was given the option of taking a 2-month wait-and-see attitiude and doing nothing for 2 months and then doing another CT/PET scan. I chose to do the chemo rather than wait. (The chemo knocked the cancer all the way back to NED in 10 weeks!) When the cancer recurred the 2nd time, we did a needle biopsy of the most accessible node to confirm the malignancy and make sure it wasn't another 2nd primary cancer since the mets were in such a surprising place. The node was malignant and mets from my uterine cancer.

    Every 3 months since my 1st recurrence, I get a CT/PET fusion scan that overlays the 2 scans on top of each other and are done back-to-back on the same machine, and the accuracy of the combined scans is very good. Any chance you had the combo CT/PET?
  • msfanciful
    msfanciful Member Posts: 559
    #4
    Hi,
    My oncologist also does
    Hi,

    My oncologist also does not give me the pet-scans (because of so many false positives).

    As a general measure for me we utilize the cat-scan.

    I am curious though; you said you knew something was up by the way you had been feeling? How were you feeling exactly if I may ask?

    I just want to encourage you not to mentally beat yourself up because of this latest development.

    Hugs and kisses,

    Sharon

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