Does Calgary need more than one PET Scanner?

The Alberta Cancer Board says Calgarians should feel lucky they have access to PET (positron emission tomography) technology, and insist no one is waiting too long for this cutting-edge cancer test.

“She couldn’t get in, for whatever reason, even though it’s just in our backyard, essentially,” says Lyall Marshall. His wife, diagnosed with a rare form of pregnancy cancer, needed an urgent PET scan in 2005, but was denied access by the Calgary Health Region.

Memory Marshall was told she’d have to wait three weeks for a scan in Edmonton.

PET scans can help show if cancer is present or if it’s spreading. It’s considered useful because it shows what’s going on inside the body’s cells.

“A lymph node may appear normal on a CT scan, but it may have cancer cells in it. With the PET you can see that, even though the lymph node is normal in size, the metabolism in the cells is too much for a normal node,” says Dr. Christine Molnar, a nuclear medicine physician.

The Alberta Cancer Board and the Calgary Health region jointly run a PET scan machine at the Foothills Hospital. It’s quickly becoming a standard of care in lung, lymphoma and melanoma cancer patients.

Dr. Neil Hagen says it’s a valuable addition to cancer care, but it’s not fool-proof.

“In other cancers, it’s not helpful. For instance, in prostate cancer, it doesn’t show up cancer when we know it’s there, so you need to be careful and know when to use it,” he adds.

In southern Alberta, there is one public PET scan machine for a population of 1.5 million.

Compare that to Dallas, a city of 1.2 million, and there are at least 20 PET scanners available.

One Global Calgary TV viewer writes, “In the U.S., if you are diagnosed with cancer and are not offered a PET scan, that is grounds for malpractice. In the US, there are in excess of 800 PET scanners. In Canada, there are but 5 or 6. Time we got with it!” writes Gerry.

The Alberta Cancer Board says more PET scans aren’t needed for southern Alberta. The Calgary facility sees about 1,600 patients a year and urgent cases are seen within 3 weeks.

“At present, if one needs a PET-CT scan urgently, we can always get them in, in a reasonable time frame,” says Dr. Hagen.

A three week wait wasn’t reasonable enough for Memory Marshall, who passed away in January of 2007.

There are 6 PET scans in all of western Canada — one in Winnipeg, two in Edmonton, one in Calgary, and two in Vancouver. There are four in the entire state of Montana.