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Athena Maris
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BREAST CANCER PATIENTS GET A POWERFUL NEW TOOL FOR SURVIVAL

Portland, OR, October 1, 2002--The key to surviving breast cancer is quick, effective treatment. Fortunately, breast cancer is a disease that responds rapidly to treatment if it is going to respond at all. As a result, the medical community has long sought ways to provide the earliest possible measurements of a patient's response to treatment.

This Breast Cancer awareness month, Medicare announced expanded coverage for our best tool to date in the fight against breast cancer. Whole body PET scanning (Positron Emissions Tomography) has proven its power in measuring the effectiveness of chemo and hormonal therapies for breast cancer patients. Unlike other forms of imaging that measure disease form, size or location, PET imaging measures the metabolic changes that occur when cancer is present. Often these changes will occur well before a tumor has actually formed.

"The new reimbursements will provide a much needed tool to achieve the goal of better disease management and help give physicians and their patients more accurate information than conventional imaging alone can yield," said Dr. Gerald L. Warnock of EPIC Imaging. "Prior to PET, nearly all of our objective means of assessing response to treatment relied on change in physical size of known metastatic lesions. These were assessed by a number of imaging techniques including CT, radiography, MRI, etc. All of these technologies depend on size change to measure the patient's response. Unfortunately, change in size frequently lags by many weeks or months even if a good response is present."

"With PET imaging," Dr. Warnock continues, "we can determine the response to treatment early on by changes in the metabolic rate of glucose utilization. If the drugs are working, rapid diminution in glucose metabolism is expected. If little change is seen, the oncologist has the opportunity to switch medications to one that is hopefully more effective. The patient is spared a more prolonged course of an ineffective therapy and given a better chance for surviving the disease."

The expanded Medicare coverage acknowledges the growing body of research demonstrating the value of PET in disease staging and management. While several studies have demonstrated the higher level of diagnostic accuracy with PET, a recent survey¹ to referring physicians of 160 breast cancer patients who underwent whole-body PET scans revealed that an impressive 60% of the physicians changed how they managed their patients as a result of the scan.

"As the first facility in the region to house a dedicated PET Scanner," said EPIC Imaging's Dr. Warnock, "We have gained considerable knowledge on the benefits of PET Scanning for breast cancers. Our biggest challenge will be to get the word out to the community on the lifesaving implications of this decision."

EPIC Imaging is the leading, full-service, outpatient imaging facility serving Oregon and Southwest Washington. Our family of centers consists of EPIC Imaging|East, EPIC Imaging|West, EPIC Imaging|ENT and the Portland P|E|T Center which housed the first dedicated Postitron Emission Technology (PET) scanner in the region.

1 Impact of Whole-Body 18F-FDG PET on Staging and Managing Patients with Breast Cancer: The Referring Physician's Perspective, Yap et al.

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