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Utility of FDG PET for evaluating treatment response in breast cancer
We believe that our paper recently published in JCO provides further evidence of the utility of FDG PET for evaluating treatment response in breast cancer. By demonstrating that a sinlge PET scan performed after treatment was able to powerfully stratify prognosis in a relatively small cohort of women in whom conventional response assessment tool abjectly failed to do so, our study paves the way for PET to become a way to assess novel therapies. Although other studies evaluating PET as a therapeutic monitoring tool however focussed on subsequent clinical, radiological or pathological response, our study focussed on long-term follow-up of survival. Our data indicate that PET can act as a surrogate for response because of its ability to predict medium and long term survival. The data are also important in clearly demonstrating that there are a subgroup of women who appear to benefit significantly from high dose chemotherapy but can't necessarily be identified from conventional RECIST assesment of response. This is important because this therapy remains somewhat controversial.
Bibliographic reference:
Rod Hicks Centre for Molecular Imaging, The Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, Melbourne, Australia
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