2024-01-06 06:34:45
New Guideline Standard for Estrogen Receptor Imaging of Breast Cancer Patients
The Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging (SNMMI) and the European Association of Nuclear Medicine (EANM) have announced the publication of a new procedure/practice guideline standard for estrogen receptor imaging of breast cancer patients using FES PET. The standard/guideline, published ahead of print in The Journal of Nuclear Medicine, is designed to help physicians recommend, perform, interpret, and report the results of 18 F-FES PET studies for patients with breast cancer.
With over two million women worldwide diagnosed with breast cancer every year, the estrogen receptor (ER) plays a significant role in the formation and progression of the disease. Approximately 70 percent of breast cancers express ER, and determining ER expression through tissue analysis is a standard of care for newly diagnosed breast cancer patients.
According to many studies, 18F-FES PET—approved for clinical use in France and the United States—offers advantages in evaluating tumor ER expression, predicting response to ER-targeted therapies, and clarifying staging results and ambiguous changes in patients with ER-expressing cancers. It may also be helpful in detecting invasive lobular breast cancer and low-grade invasive ductal cancer, and in some cases, may serve as a substitute for biopsy.
The new guideline/practice standard includes information on common clinical indications, procedure specifications, patient selection and preparation, administration of tracers and imaging, as well as imaging interpretation and reporting. It also presents standard quality control, quality assurance, and imaging procedures for 18F-FES PET.
“The availability of a standardized imaging procedure will help promote the appropriate use of 18F-FES PET and improve subsequent studies,” emphasize the authors. “Accuracy, precision, repeatability, and reproducibility both for clinical management of patients and for the use of 18F-FES in multicenter trials is important.”
SNMMI/EANM periodically define new standards/guidelines for the practice of nuclear medicine to help advance the science of nuclear medicine and to provide effective and safe medical care to patients. Each standard/guideline, representing a policy statement of the SNMMI/EANM, undergoes a thorough consensus process and extensive review.
The article was published online in December 2023, and it is hoped that this new standard/guideline will improve the care and treatment of breast cancer patients worldwide.
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