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Showing posts from April, 2019

Do All Cancers Show Up on PET Scan?

When doctors need to examine the inner workings of the body, they are most likely going to recommend a PET scan. A positron emission tomography (PET) scan shows images of organs and tissues and how they are functioning. It is used in the detection of several diseases including heart disease, cancer and brain disorders. Doctors introduce a tracer into the system and areas with high chemical activity show up on the screen as bright spots. These bright spots are usually the areas affected by disease.  With cancer cells, they appear as bright spots due to its higher metabolic rate compared to normal cells. A PET scan will help detect cancer and show how far it has spread. In some instances, cancers may not show on the scan. Possible reasons include: • It is common for patients to receive a diagnosis for cancer of unknown primary. This means that the test has found cancer in areas where it spread to but hasn’t detected where it started from or the primary site. Cancers are class