Unnecessary lung surgeries halved by preoperative PET

New quantitative data suggests that 30 percent of the surgeries performed for non-small cell lung cancer patients in a community-wide clinical study were deemed unnecessary. Additionally, positron emission tomography (PET) was found to reduce unnecessary surgeries by 50 percent, according to research published in the March issue of the Journal of Nuclear Medicine.PET imaging prior to surgery helps stage a patient's disease by providing functional images of tumors throughout the body, especially areas where cancer has spread, otherwise known as metastasis.



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