False-positives In Cancer Scans, Inhibited by Warm Blanket
New research at Saint Louis University found that placing a warm blanket on patients undergoing PET/CT scans to detect cancer, makes the test more accurate.
In up to 9 percent of patients, doctors have difficulty interpreting scans because of the presence of brown adipose tissue, also known as brown fat, which may lead to a cancer misdiagnosis.
“This is a significant finding,” says Medhat Osman, M.D., Ph.D., assistant professor of nuclear medicine and PET director at Saint Louis University School of Medicine. “It is a solution that not only is effective but low-cost and extremely easy for any PET facility to implement.”
The brown fat has an important physiological role by keeping the body warm in cold temperatures. However, the accumulations of the tracer that is used to identify malignancies during PET/CT scans that appear in brown fat will either appear to look like cancer or mask the appearance of cancer in areas such as the lymph nodes, making the scan difficult or inaccurate to interpret.
Read more at Science Daily.
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