When prostate cancer returns a nuclear medicine scan can help, Elizabeth Tracey reports

Podcast: Download (Duration: 1:05 — 1.5MB)

Subscribe: RSS

Prostate specific membrane antigen or PSMA PET scanning is very accurate at detecting and visualizing prostate cancer throughout the body. Now a study using this type of scan on men whose disease recurred shows its efficacy in this case also. Kimmel Cancer Center director William Nelson at Johns Hopkins describes the findings.

Nelson: This is a nuclear medicine kind of scan that detects prostate specific membrane antigens on the surface of most prostate cancer cells. What this particular study was focusing on was someone who's been diagnosed with prostate cancer, underwent a radical prostatectomy or radiation therapy and that at some point in the future had their prostate specific antigen rising again. That means there's prostate cancer afoot somewhere. When they use this scan they can find where the cancer at least for the majority of it seems to be in 84%.                    :32

Nelson says using this technique may be limited by availability. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.