As oncologists, radiologists and epidemiologists continue to debate the details of overdiagnosis and overtreatment, a viewpoint published online July 29 in JAMA listed several recommendations for the National Cancer Institute to consider as it attempts to evaluate the overdiagnosis issue.

A fluorine-based PET agent on the workbench called 2-Deoxy-2-18F-fluoro-D-mannose (F-18 FDM) has been found to work similarly and potentially better than FDG for cancer imaging, especially of the brain, according to a study published July 10 in the Journal of Nuclear Medicine.

Little improvement in survival has been made for patients with sarcomas, despite an array of aggressive treatments. Researchers are trying to identify patients at high risk of recurrence by performing FDG PET/CT to quantify necrotic areas of tissue, a strong indicator of survival, according to research published in the July issue of the American Journal of Roentgenology.

The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) has issued a Grade B recommendation for annual low-dose CT screening for individuals between the ages of 50 and 80 who are at high risk for lung cancer.

Emergency department (ED) use of chest x-rays for children presenting with moderate to severe asthma increased significantly from 1995 to 2009. Pediatric EDs bucked the trend, indicating a need to transfer best practices to standard EDs, which could improve efficiency, cut costs and decrease radiation exposure, according to a study published in the August issue of Pediatrics.

In the Tour de France, every minute matters. For riders who sustain what could be a serious injury, the only way to be evaluated and cleared to continue riding would be to travel off-site to a hospital.

The power of PET came across loud and clear in July. Studies showed its utility in informing management of triple-negative breast cancers, monitoring Alzheimer’s progression and predicting chemo success for patients with non-small cell lung cancer.

The heterogeneity of breast cancer can make it difficult to capture, especially in cases where telltale receptor expression or tumor characterization are not involved. However, MR and F-18 FDG PET may be able to suss out the more obscure phenotypes of the disease, according to a study published July 17 in Radiology.