Читать книгу Overcome the Challenges of Cancer Care - M. D. Rosenberg - Страница 19

For the majority of patients, we don’t order scans during cancer treatment. There are two main reasons: The first is our inability to see single cancer cells on scans. If cancer cells are dying, we won’t be able to see it until millions of cells have died. The second reason is the lag time between the death of the cancer cells and what we see on a scan. It can take weeks for a mass to disappear, even if all the cells have died. This is because it can take that long for the body to remove the dead cells and repair the region.

Most of the time, it isn’t helpful to get a scan during cancer treatment. Often, scans during treatment only make patients and families anxious. (Of course, there are exceptions. We often get PET/CT scans when treating lymphomas.)