discovery PET-CT

Assalamualaikum to all our muslim readers and good morning/afternoon/evening to everyone ^_^

actually there are a lot of things that we can share together but because of my commitment to study so i can't post so much info/entry for this blog. maybe my partner/Dr can help you all.

All right lets dont waste our time. i just want to share what I've learn from my radiology class yesterday. Actually to be honest, im not very good in this thing. ..plus i have to force myself to like this subject.hahaha... As a doctor, u should know this radiology stuff. U are responsible towards ur patient and u have to be familiar with it so that when ur consultant ask u to order like for example our topic today PET-CT for ur patient, at least u know what is PET-CT. 

PET-CT

PET : Positron Emission Tomography

If CT scan give u the information at the anatomical level, this PET-CT give u a picture at the cellular level before the organ distorted like for example the lymph node. Let say if someone have lymph node enlargement (due to many causes u just name it) but how can we know that the lymph node might change into cancer??? therefore by doing the PET-CT, it can show u .

this PET-CT is actually give a radiation intravenously. A radiologist will inject a radiopharmaceutical 18-FDG/ Fludeoxyglucose  into the patient's vein. The fluorine-18 is combine with the glucose go to area where need a lot of glucose in the body such as cancer cells. As we know cancer cells need a lot of glucose to grow so it will absorb the 18-FDG and we can see on a picture like below that show the 18-FDG accumulate at the disease site.   

" Using PET along side of CT can be beneficial because it provides an anatomical as well as a metabolic view. It tells us what structure it is and what it is accomplishing biochemically. PET defines the cellular activity of the tumor, mass, etc. while CT provides details on the size and location of the tumor, mass, etc. "

on ur left image : CT
middle image: PET
right image : PET-CT

this is how the PET-CT machine looks like. Before we do the PET-CT, we should prepare the patient first. The normal thing that we ask the patient to do is fasting which start at 12 midnite till the next morning . 

we should be aware of the patient condition because they should avoid strenuous exercise 24 hours before the scan done, should know also if any claustrophobic, diabetes, pregnant women,nursing mother because she should not breastfed her baby 24 hours after the scan done because we afraid of radiation transmission to the baby.

The advantage of using PET-CT is that we can detect a disease earlier and accurately and the disadvantages of it are it is not easily available, expensive. In Malaysia there are only 3-4 PET-CT machine which 2 of it belongs to government : 1 in putrajaya hospital and another one in penang hospital. The other 2 belongs to private .