Led by Dr. Venkatesh Rangarajan from Tata Memorial Centre, the group found that Ga-68 PSMA PET/CT was better at detecting primary, nodal, and soft-tissue metastases than contrast-enhanced CT and sodium fluoride (NaF) PET/CT.
"The PSMA-PET scan appears to have significantly higher accuracy than conventional imaging in detecting metastatic lesions in the skeleton and extraskeleton lesions, like nodes," he wrote in an email to AuntMinnie.com. "The implication is that PSMA-PET/CT might very well soon be a 'one-stop shop' for assessing disease burden in prostate cancer, especially in a suspected recurrence setting."
The retrospective study included data from more than two dozen patients with prostate cancer, including three cases for staging and the remainder for restaging. Subjects were imaged with Ga-68 PSMA PET/CT, contrast-enhanced CT, and NaF-PET/CT.
Ga-68 PSMA uptake was evident in the three prostate cancer staging cases, whereas contrast-enhanced CT found only one lesion in one patient. Ga-68 PSMA PET/CT also detected significantly more local recurrence than contrast-enhanced CT and NaF-PET/CT.
"Ga-68 PSMA PET/CT maps the prostate-specific membrane antigen expression," Rangarajan said. "Hence it is very effective even in low levels of prostate-specific antigen, and it detects relapse and metastases of prostate cancer with improved contrast compared to NaF-PET."
