Scientists at UCSF Study Impact of 68Ga-PSMA-11 PET on Post Radical Prostatectomy (RP) Salvage Radiotherapy
This is a PSMA PET image of a patient with metastatic prostate cancer. This is a whole body view demonstrating numerous sites of metastatic disease, that would have generally not been visualized by conventional imaging (CT or MRI). The image demonstrates the ability to see numerous sites of metastasis throughout the whole body using a single imaging study.
This retrospective review of patients with PSMA-PET imaging looked at 125 patients following RP with low PSA (≤2.0 ng/mL) and assessed if the recurrent disease was within standard radiation target volumes. They compared patient and clinical variables between men with recurrences covered by standard salvage radiation fields and those with recurrences outside of standard fields. Overall, they found that 68Ga-PSMA-11 PET detects disease in a majority of patients with PSA ≤2.0 following RP. Nearly one-third of men had PSMA-avid disease that would be missed by standard radiation fields. Overall, they concluded that 68Ga-PSMA-11 PET is an imaging modality that can dramatically impact the design and use of post-RP salvage radiotherapy. The results were published in the July 2019 issue of Urology.
Thomas Hope, MD, associate professor in residence in the Abdominal Imaging and Nuclear Medicine Sections at the UC San Francisco Department of Radiology and Biomedical Imaging was an author on this study. Other authors from UCSF include Lauren Boreta, MD Susan Wu, MD and Melody Xu, MD (Radiation Oncology); Adam Gadzinski, MD, Kirsten Green, MD, MS, Kathryn Quantrom, Hao Nguyen, MD, Peter Carroll, MD, MPH and Felix Feng, MD, first author (Urology).