PET stands for positron emission tomography”. It is a nuclear medicine imaging test by which a small amount of liquid radioactive material is injected into your physique and is used to diagnose a variety of diseases, including many kinds of cancers, coronary heart illness and other ailments. The radioactive substance most commonly utilized in PET scanning is a straightforward sugar (like glucose) called FDG, which stands for fluorodeoxyglucose”. It is injected into your bloodstream and accumulates in your physique the place it provides off vitality in the form of gamma rays. These are detected by the PET scanner and a computer converts the alerts into detailed pictures or photos displaying how tissue and organs are working. If you’re having an FDG PET, your sugar metabolism (how sugar is utilized by your body) is imaged. This is often used for cancer imaging as tumours want sugar to develop.
Understandably, waiting for outcomes could make you anxious. If your doctor wants the outcomes urgently, they make a remark of this on the scan request type and the outcomes shall be ready sooner. Try to recollect to ask your doctor how lengthy you must count on to attend for the results if you find yourself first requested to go for the test. If it isn’t an emergency, and you have not heard a couple of weeks after your take a look at, ring your doctor’s secretary or specialist nurse to verify if they are back.
After you may have the injection you rest for about an hour. This allows the radioactive tracer to spread through the physique. The scan itself can take up to an hour. The scan produces a picture of the radioactive tracer within the physique. It is vital that you just lie as nonetheless as attainable while the scan is being completed. It shouldn’t be in any respect painful. If you start to feel unwell or want some help, you should have a buzzer you can press to get attention. The employees doing the scan will be capable of see you at all times.
To conduct the scan, a short-lived radioactive tracer isotope is injected into the residing topic (normally into blood circulation). Each tracer atom has been chemically incorporated right into a biologically lively molecule. There is a ready period whereas the lively molecule becomes concentrated in tissues of curiosity; then the subject is placed within the imaging scanner. The molecule mostly used for this goal is F-18 labeled fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG), a sugar, for which the ready interval is typically an hour. During the scan, a file of tissue focus is made because the tracer decays.