Axumin Pet Scan Sensitivity

Alephnull in reply to tall allen 8 months ago.

Axumin pet scan sensitivity. A bone scan has low sensitivity depending on the prostate specific antigen level with low specificity as well. The beauty of the axumin pet scan is that it offers the possibility of detecting small metastatic lesions in the lymph nodes with psa levels in the 1 to 10 range. I ve done my research and that process will certainly continue but i m hoping to get some feedback here from experienced veteran forum members. Axumin adds to your long term overall radiation exposure which can lead to an increased risk of cancer.

Until now the only advanced alternatives have been costly agents with limited availability such as c11 choline. Sensitivity and specificity were calculated at a cutoff determined by maximizing the youden index j sensitivity specificity 1. Hypersensitivity reactions including anaphylaxis may occur in patients who receive axumin. We briefly discuss the salient characteristics.

Axumin pet is food and drug administration approved for the evaluation of prostate cancer biochemical recurrence. Axumin is indicated for positron emission tomography pet imaging in men with suspected prostate cancer recurrence based on elevated psa levels following prior treatment. I m deeply curious about the effectiveness and particularly the sensitivity of the so called axumin or fluciclovine based facbc pet scan in detecting distant low grade metastatic disease relative to other pet scan methodologies. This retrospective data analysis was conducted between january 2017 and october 2017 reviewing f 18 fluciclovine pet ct post therapy scans of 83 pca patients with a rising psa.

Accuracy was determined by combining the scans sensitivity and specificity measures that show a test s ability to correctly identify when disease is present and not present. As psa levels go up an axumin pet ct scan is better able to identify recurrent prostate cancer. From the huntsman cancer institute in salt lake city looked at the rates of success in detecting. Pets don t have good resolution which is why cts are always taken at the same time.

Conventional ct and nuclear medicine bone scans have limited sensitivity especially in patients with low psa levels less than 10 ng ml. The paper by armstrong et al. Safe handling practices should be used to minimize radiation exposure to the patient and health care providers. Axumin is a synthetic amino acid analogue which gets taken up by prostate.

As their name implies pet ct scans combine a ct scan with a pet scan. A new report from a relatively small single institution study has provided additional information about the utility of 18f fluciclovine axumin pet ct scans in the detection of recurrent prostate cancer after definitive first line treatment. There is a siemens machine that does both pet and mri at the same time. If they are unable to find a lesion where the axumin scan says it should be a false positive may be suspected.

Several studies have shown that axumin pet findings played a key role in treatment modification by finding otherwise undetected lesions. The axumin scan is approved for men who have developed a rising psa after previous radiation or surgery. Serious reactions including anaphylaxis a severe potentially life threatening allergic reaction may occur in patients who receive axumin. Psma pet ct was more accurate for both metastases found in lymph nodes in the pelvis and in more distant parts of the body including bone.

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