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June 7, 2004
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For Further Information:
Aaron Patnode
617-355-6420
aaron.patnode@childrens.harvard.edu
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New technology to help pediatric specialists better pinpoint diagnosis
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Children's Hospital Boston today unveiled a new Positron Emission Tomography (PET) system, the first of its kind designated to be used solely for pediatric purposes. With a specially trained pediatric staff of physicians, nuclear medicine technologists and nurses, Children's Hospital Boston staff will now be able to diagnose certain diseases earlier and more accurately in children, allowing them to better plan treatment and follow-up. The new PET system will be used to study blood flow and metabolic activity in the body, identifying a variety of conditions including cancer, and diseases of the brain and heart. The PET system's unique ability to assess the chemical and physiological changes related to function and metabolism make it a key tool for early diagnosis of disease.
''With the addition of the new PET system, Children's Hospital Boston continues to provide its patients with the most advanced and most effective means for diagnosing pediatric diseases,'' said Dr. James Mandell, president and chief executive officer of Children's Hospital Boston. ''This new technology may eliminate more invasive procedures while providing the most cutting-edge imaging functionality available today. Having this technology available is a tremendous benefit to our patients.''
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''The new PET system will allow us to provide a specialized diagnostic service which physicians and clinicians in the hospital will use to determine the most effective and least invasive way to treat our patients,'' said Dr. S. Ted Treves, chief of the Division of Nuclear Medicine at Children's Hospital Boston. ''With the addition of the PET system, Children's Hospital Boston can now promptly and accurately identify changes in our patients related to the function and metabolism of their organs and systems and then refer the patient down the hall to our multidisciplinary specialized departments for care. The new system will allow us to decrease the time period between the identification and treatment of a disease.''
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About Positron Emission Tomography (PET)
PET is a safe, effective and non-invasive diagnostic imaging technique that provides special images of the human body (PET scans). PET scans can show how various organs and systems in the body utilize vital substances such as derivatives of glucose, and how these systems function. PET allows the assessment of chemical and physiological changes related to function and metabolism that occur in many diseases. Since functional changes often take place before physical changes, PET can be a key tool for early diagnosis of diseases. The PET scanner is especially helpful in pinpointing the activity, location and size of cancerous tumors or in measuring changes in metabolism and blood flow in the brain or heart.
The process of receiving a PET scan involves three steps:
- First, patients are administered a radiopharmaceutical or radioactive tracer which will transmit signals (gamma rays) that can be detected from outside the body by the PET scanner. The radiopharmaceutical most frequently used acts almost exactly like sugar in the body. The radioactive sugar goes to parts of the body that are very active, such as the brain, the heart, the muscles, as well as active tumors.
- The second step of the process is the waiting period. After the radiopharmaceutical is injected, patients must wait in a calm environment for a short time period for the injection to make its way through the body. A quiet environment ensures that the body systems will be relatively at rest while the radiopharmaceutical is moving through the body.
- The third step is the PET scan. After the waiting period has elapsed, patients are placed through the PET scanner and the results of their scan can be reviewed almost immediately.
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PET's unique ability to show highly sensitive functional images of the body separate it from computer tomography (CT) scans and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). PET allows doctors to assess the chemical and physiological changes related to the function and metabolism that occur in many diseases. PET is able to determine functional changes at the earliest stages, often before any symptoms appear. Among the other benefits of PET are epilepsy and cerebrovascular disorder assessment, detection of the extent of tumors and identification of distant metastases, monitoring of therapy efficacy, and high-resolution skeletal imaging.
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Children's Hospital Boston is the nation's premier pediatric medical center. Founded in 1869 as a 20-bed hospital for children, today it is a 300-bed comprehensive center for pediatric and adolescent health care grounded in the values of excellence in patient care and sensitivity to the complex needs and diversity of children and families. More than 100 outpatient specialty clinics are located at Children's. Children's Hospital Boston is the primary pediatric teaching affiliate of Harvard Medical School, home to the world's leading pediatric research enterprise, and the largest provider of health care to the children of Massachusetts. For more information about the hospital visit: www.childrenshospital.org.
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Note to Editors: Tours of the PET scanner are available by request. Interviews with patient families who have used the PET scanners also are available. Interviews also may be arranged with Dr. Treves.
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