Esophageal Cancer

Like most cancer treatments, the treatment for esophageal cancer may cause side effects so your doctor will schedule you for routine follow-up visits to help manage those side effects and check how effective the treatment is and whether or not the cancer is spreading. Your doctors may order follow up tests. This is also where PET can help.

PET is the most useful test that you can have when doctors are staging or re-staging your cancer because it is more accurate than CT or any other test.

Imaging with PET is also critical in order to look for the return of the cancer. In many patients with esophageal cancers, a mass may remain after treatment. The mass itself may be on a CT scan, but CT cannot determine if the tumor has been successfully treated or if residual cancer remains that must be removed. PET can be used to image tumor response to therapy and to detect recurrence in successfully treated lesions. For post surgery and other treatments, PET is extremely important for monitoring if the cancer cells have returned and if treatment should be re-started.

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