COSM 2012: Dr. Jonas Johnson Explores the Subtleties of PET/CT for Tumors

“We think that for small tumors, PET/CT is unnecessary,” he added. They also don’t know how long PET/CT should be performed for surveillance. “Nobody knows the answer to that,” he said.

Dr. Johnson said there is value in using PET/CT beyond mere surveillance, in finding unknown tumors, but that it’s difficult to persuade insurers of its value, largely due to the lack of data. “The radiologists now are specialized in reading it, and originally there was nobody who trained them to read it,” he said. “So the original data is not as useful as the present data.”