NUCLEAR MEDICINE & PET-CT
PET-CT Service
PET-CT Discovery IQ
The early detection and monitoring service for cancer at Clínica Abreu CDD is equipped with two advanced Discovery IQ PET-CT machines from General Electric's Healthcare division.
The first of its kind to be installed in the Caribbean, these devices feature three LightBurst detection rings, which increase the sharpness of images, allowing for more clear identification of smaller tumor lesions. In addition, they use a lower dose of radiation and offer a high speed of body scanning, achieving unprecedented efficiency in the Dominican Republic and in the region in PET-CT studies, comparable only to excellent services in the United States and the European Community.
PET-CT is a nuclear medicine imaging tool used in 90% of cases for early detection, diagnosis and monitoring of cancer by creating a three-dimensional image of the metabolic functioning of cells, fused with a computerized axial tomography after injecting the patient with a small dose of a radioactive, positron-emitting tracer.
Radioactive tracers or radiopharmaceuticals are the product of a particle accelerator known as a cyclotron. There are several types of radiopharmaceuticals whose molecular composition characteristics increase the sensitivity of uptake depending on the type of pathology to be studied.
The images generated by this study will allow specialists to accurately identify the existence and exact location of abnormal cellular activity in the patient's body, see the aggressiveness, tendency and behavior of a particular tumor process, and detect cancer cells that other diagnostic methods cannot detect.
There is ample evidence (more than 15,000 peer-reviewed publications) regarding the clinical benefits of using positron emission tomography, the impact of which has been so great that various authors and clinical scientists have considered PETCT to be the most important development in medical imaging techniques in the last twenty years.
PETCT has relevant applications in the areas of oncology, cardiology and neurology, however 90% of its current use is dedicated to the clinical management of cancer patients for:
-
Diagnosis, differentiation between benign and malignant lesions (in solitary nodules, in the face of discrepancies between the clinical picture and indeterminate complementary examinations, although the recommended method is biopsy).
-
Search for unknown primary tumors, paraneoplastic syndromes and metastases.
-
Staging of known oncological processes.
-
Response monitoring during oncological therapy.
-
Differentiation between tumor recurrence and changes after treatment, in the face of indeterminate complementary examinations.
-
Determine tumor recurrence in the presence of elevated tumor markers.
-
Selection of the location of the tumor region to perform a biopsy.
-
Guide to planning radiotherapy treatments.
Available radiopharmaceuticals
Fluorodeoxyglucose is an analogue of glucose, its full name is 2-fluoro-2-deoxy-D-glucose, but its abbreviated form is often used: FDG.
FDG is transported into cells by the same mechanism as unlabeled glucose, by passive diffusion facilitated by carrier proteins, and then phosphorylated to 18FDG-6-phosphate by the enzymes hexokinase and glucokinase. It remains trapped in cells because it cannot continue the glucose metabolic pathway.
The use of FDG in the evaluation of cancer patients is based on the increased concentration of this tracer inside tumor cells for several reasons:
-
Preferentially anaerobic metabolism that increases the action of glucose transporter molecules (GLUT1 to GLUT9).
-
Increase in the number of such molecules.
-
Increased activity of hexokinase isoenzymes.
-
Decreased glucose-6-phosphatase activity.
Furthermore, FDG also allows for the exploration of other pathological processes belonging to tissues that preferentially use glucose as an energy source. This is the case of the myocardium and the brain, which has allowed the clinical use of the technique in the evaluation of patients with different diseases of the central nervous system and with ischemic heart disease.
SODIUM FLUORIDE (NAF)
It is an important tool for the detection and evaluation of metastatic bone conditions.
PSMA (F18-PSMA-1007)
The radiopharmaceutical F18-PSMA, which uses the PSMA (prostate-specific membrane antigen) protein as a tracer to capture cells with abnormal metabolic activity related to prostate cancer, which bloodstream attaches to the cells that are causing the PSA elevation and is then captured by the PETCT equipment, generating an image that allows both their location and their metabolic activity to be seen.
This radiopharmaceutical provides a solution to the great challenge faced by urologists in determining where the cells disseminated outside the prostate gland were located, who, using different traditional study protocols, only obtained partial or incomplete indicators.
To ensure that our technology is accessible to the greatest number of people, we work with all ARS on their basic, contributory, complementary, international and state-subsidized care plans.
To learn more about our MRI service and how and which equipment can benefit you, we invite you to start a conversation with one of our operators: