Inflammatory bowel diseases, such as Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis, may be detected more easily by PET/CT, according to an article published in the May issue of the Journal of Nuclear Medicine.
Chronic, inflammatory conditions such as Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis lead to diarrhea, stricture formation, abdominal pain and weight loss, and together may afflict more than one million Americans.
"In Crohn's disease patients, 18F-FDG PET/CT seems to accurately detect advanced inflammatory changes and also unmask subepithelial disease activity that might be missed by colonoscopy. Therefore, PET/CT might serve as an additional tool for evaluating disease activity in IBD patients, e.g., in defining complete remission," lead author Dominik Bettenworth, M.D. said in a statement. Announcement