PET alters managementfor one in three patients

March 4, 2008 Diagnostic Imaging. PET alters managementfor one in three patients Early national data suggest that Medicare’s expanded clinical indications for reimbursement were warranted H. A. Abella -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Preliminary results from the National Oncologic PET Registry indicate that FDG-PET led referring physicians to alter the clinical management for more than one-third of nearly 23,000 cancer patients who underwent the procedures. The NOPR was devised to confirm that FDG-PET is as efficacious in clinical practice as it appeared to be in clinical trials. Those trials preceded the decision of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services in 2005 to conditionally grant reimbursement for most applications for cancer diagnosis, staging, and treatment monitoring. The requirement for a registry, to be managed by the American College of Radiology Imaging Network, was included in Medicare’s coverage determination in order to measure FDG-PET’s influence on clinical decision making.

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