Dear Musculoskeletal Imaging Insider,
The American Society for Therapeutic Radiology and Oncology (ASTRO) meeting is under way in Boston this week, and proton therapy is among the cutting-edge technologies showing promise in cancer treatment and imaging.
This edition of the Musculoskeletal Insider features a study conducted at Loma Linda University Medical Center and South Korea's National Cancer Center that indicates that proton therapy is an effective treatment for chondrosarcomas of the skull bone and cervical spine. Chondrosarcoma is the second most common form of bone cancer, and it does not often respond favorably to radiation and chemotherapy.
Read more about the study, and the future of proton therapy, by clicking here.
Also in this issue is a report on SPECT/CT's prowess in better determining lesion location in bone scans. Dr. Sherif Heiba and researchers at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City investigated the efficacy of SPECT/CT in evaluating back pain patients and the modality's value in the workup of those patients. Learn more about the research by clicking here.
In addition, staff writer Eric Barnes has filed a report on gout, the most common form of crystalline arthropathy and the most common inflammatory arthropathy in men. Gout affects some 2.1 million people in the U.S. and its prevalence is increasing.
Last, but not least, read the details of a Korean study that showed that FDG-PET/CT and MRI offer similar diagnostic accuracies in differentiating between malignant and benign soft-tissue tumors, but contribute different attributes when imaging bone tumors.
Keep in touch with the Musculoskeletal Imaging Digital Community in the coming weeks and days for more research from ASTRO and other leading sources within the imaging industry.
