Is whole-body FDG-PET valuable for health screening?

Excerpt

The survival of patients with various cancers, such as colorectal, breast and prostate carcinomas, has improved significantly since the 1970s [1], but unfortunately cancer remains the first or second most common cause of death among both men and women in developed countries. Present-day medical practice generally assumes that early detection of cancer offers the best chance of a good outcome. Finding a cancer in an asymptomatic person provides more treatment options, offers a better prognosis and cuts down on expenses compared with the cost incurred when cancers are detected at later stages. To detect cancers at an early stage, self-referral for mammography, routine or virtual colonoscopy, sigmoidoscopy, Pap smear screening, prostate-specific antigen testing and measurements of other tumour-specific markers have been actively recommended by consensual medical opinion, despite some continuing debate as to the value of these measures. With improvements in the standard of living and ready access to medical information via the internet and other mass media, more and more healthy lay persons are willing to undergo cancer screening. In Far Eastern countries (especially Japan), this tendency is strongly evident. …