Dr. Petrylak on Novel Imaging Modalities in Prostate Cancer

Daniel P. Petrylak, MD, director, Prostate and GU Medical Oncology, Yale Cancer Center, discusses novel imaging modalities in prostate cancer.

Petrylak says that imaging is an issue in prostate cancer: It is hard for physicians to tell what they are seeing and determine if it will impact the treatment of the patient. As an example, Petrylak says there are patients with a rising PSA with no detectable metastases based on CT and bone scans. This makes treatment decisions difficult because several therapeutic options, such as sipuleucel-T, enzalutamide, and abiraterone, are not available to these patients.

There is now a focus on detecting disease earlier through the use of more sensitive methods such as sodium fluoride PET scanning or new PET imaging agents, such as choline. Petrylak warns that these tests can detect tumors that have no clinical relevance or may not be disease at all. Confirmation is needed to determine if a metastatic lesion is present.