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Cancer: yes or no?
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Urs Suter* is happy: the prostate cancer the doctors found two years ago is gone. The 71-year-old has a new diagnostic method to thank. This method enabled nuclear medicine specialist Irene Burger to show that the cancer that was thought to have disappeared after the first targeted treatment was in fact still there. “Thanks to the renewed application of focused ultrasound, the last aggressive tumor cells could now also be eliminated,” says Suter with delight. Radical intervention is now no longer on the cards for Suter.
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«I can walk freely and enjoy my life again.»Irene Burger uses positron emission tomography (PET) in this new diagnostic method. Using PET, she can make prostate carcinomas and metastases visible, even when these are hard or impossible to detect using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), the most widespread method for cancer diagnosis.
In the course of the new treatment, patients are first injected with a special substance that binds to prostate-specific membrane antigens, which live on the surface of prostate cancer cells. The substance accumulates here and is easily detectable by the PET scan. The result is contrast-rich, informative images that often make local prostate tumors and metastases much more visible than MRI scans.
“If the method delivers what it promises, we will be able to diagnose prostate cancer much more accurately in future,” explains Burger. “We will be better able to identify which tumors are aggressive and whether an operation or radiation is even necessary.” The success of a treatment can also be monitored, as in the case of Urs Suter. Without the second round of treatment, his cancer would have returned.
With the support of the Iten-Kohaut Foundation, University Hospital Zurich is currently testing this new method in a two-year study.
*anonymized
100% financed
