ESSEN, Germany, Dec. 6 (UPI) -- A German study suggests that whole-body PET and CT scans provide a suitable method for diagnosing the stage of colorectal cancer.
Dr. Patrick Veit-Haibach of University Hospital Essen and colleagues evaluated the diagnostic accuracy of whole-body PET/CT colonography for 47 patients with colorectal cancer and compared those findings with the accuracy of conventional CT staging alone and CT followed by PET.
Patients underwent whole-body PET/CT colonography 1 day after colonoscopy. Fifty lesions were detected in the 47 patients.
Of the 47 patients, PET/CT colonography changed the therapy management in four, or 9 percent, compared with conventional staging. The change in patient management was based either on a more accurate assessment of the tumor stage of colorectal cancer or on accompanying findings on PET/CT colonography, according to Veit-Haibach.
The findings are published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
