Lung cancer is a very common malignancy. Treatments are currently available for patients with all stages of disease, and much research is also being conducted to improve on currently available therapies. This talk discusses how PET/CT can help in assessing the effectiveness of a chosen treatment. By non-invasively imaging the changes of uptake of tracers such as FDG into the tumor during and after therapy important information of how well a specific therapy is working can be obtained. Ongoing clinical trials will help to find out how PET/CT can be best applied to tailor treatment of lung cancer for optimal effectiveness.
Martin Allen-Auerbach, MD, is the Director of Nuclear Medicine at the Santa Monica UCLA Hospital, and Assistant Professor in Nuclear Medicine, Division of Pharmacology, at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. Dr. Allen-Auerbach has published both basic and clinical research focused on optimizing PET/CT imaging strategies in various cancers, the clinical evaluation of new PET tracers and the advantages of PET/CT over other imaging modalities when it comes to staging and assessment of treatment response in malignant disease. Apart from conducting several clinical studies, he serves as an attending physician for the Departments of Nuclear Medicine both at the Westwood and Santa Monica Hospital.
