[Oncologic PET-CT: the importance of a multidisciplinary team]

Before the advent of combined PET-CT in 2000, CT and FDG-PET used separately had become the imaging techniques of choice for the management of oncologic patients. Integrating these two modalities into a single scanner confers diverse clinical advantages. There is less confusion over nonmalignant FDG uptake caused by inflammatory foci or due to variation in normal physiologic uptake among different tissues, such as brown fat or muscles, because CT enables the anatomic location to be determined more accurately. In addition, PET-CT enables improved localization of malignant lesions, better follow-up of the response to treatment, and improved targeting for biopsy and radiotherapy. PET-CT also improves the detection of non-FDG-avid tumors that would not be evident on a PET study alone. PET-CT should be the only procedure in most oncologic patients, obviating further CT examinations, which is particularly important in children. Close collaboration between specialists in nuclear medicine and radiologists is essential to obtain the maximum benefit of combined PET-CT scans. This collaboration is also necessary in other hybrid systems, such as SPECT-CT or PET-MRI. In oncologic patients, it is important to ensure that maximum diagnostic yield of PET-CT is reached; this can only be accomplished in diagnostic imaging departments that enable close collaboration between professionals of different specialties.