Why do people get a pet scan?

Several reasons: Lung cancer, breast cancer, testicular and ovarian cancer, recurrent colorectal cancer, lymphoma, melanoma, recurrent brain tumors, tumor-therapy monitoring, and assessing effectiveness of treatments such as chemotherapy. Coronary artery disease and myocardial viability. Diagnosis of parkinson's, alzheimer's, huntington's, epilepsy, and stroke.

Cancer work-up: Usually patients get pet scans for cancer work-ups, diagnosis - but not always - can also be for inflammatory diseases.

PETs...: Pet scans can be used for a variety of purposes depending on the specific radiotracer used. Most commonly, pets are done with FDG (glucose) for oncologic reasons. Other uses of pet include cardiac pet (viability and perfusion studies) or neurologic pet (for seizure focus mapping or dementia).