The diagnostic imaging panel of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) will hold a hearing today on PET and Alzheimer’s disease. Dr. Peter Conti, representing the Reston, VA-based Society of Nuclear Medicine, is scheduled discuss the role of PET, and the latest advances in the modality, for diagnosing and treating the illness.
The nuclear medicine community is looking to gain the panel’s support for the addition of Alzheimer's disease as a CMS-reimbursable indication for FDG-PET scanning.
Last month, the CMS proposed cutting the ambulatory payment classification (APC) from $2,331.18 to $1,375 for other FDG-PET procedures.
Several studies have touted the usefulness of PET in studying Alzheimer’s disease. Most recently, researchers from UCLA have found a radioactive molecule that, when used with PET, visualizes brain decay or brain lesions characteristic of Alzheimer's disease in living patients. The results are published in the January 2002 issue of the American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry.
FDG-PET "can be used to assist with the characterization of early dementia in geriatric patients for whom the differential diagnosis includes one or more kinds of neurodegenerative disease associated with a dementia process. We believe it is particularly helpful in this population when there has been a change in cognitive status, when the etiology is not apparent, or when symptoms are not reversed in a reasonable amount of time," Conti said in a written statement.
By AuntMinnie.com staff writersJanuary 10, 2002
Related Reading
PET scanning plus new molecular probe detects early Alzheimer's disease in vivo, January 10, 2002
PET payment cut will force efficiency, procedure volume gains, December 6, 2001
Wagner taps PET Alzheimer’s study as SNM 2001’s Image of the Year, June 6, 2001
New PET radiotracer could replace FDG for detecting Alzheimer’s, March 26, 2001
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