India, Oct. 18 -- PET-CT helps answer key questions in cancer care: where the cancer is, how far it has spread and what treatment is most appropriate. It provides information about both the structure and metabolic activity of disease. With commonly used FDG-PET, many cancer cells absorb more glucose than surrounding normal tissues. Combined with CT, this helps locate tumours and assess their spread. Accurate staging is crucial to cancer management. Localised cancers may be treated with surgery or radiotherapy, while cancers that have spread to distant organs, lymph nodes or bones may require systemic treatments such as chemotherapy, hormonal therapy or targeted therapy. By providing valuable staging information, PET-CT may help avoid unnecessary treatment and potentially reduce overall treatment costs. In selected cancers, PET-CT can assess treatment response. Changes in metabolic activity may sometimes become apparent before significant changes in tumour size. When recurrence is suspected after successful treatment, PET-CT can help identify where cancer has returned and how extensively it has spread, guiding further treatment decisions. PSMA PET-CT is a major advancement in prostate cancer imaging. This highly sensitive technique detects PSMA-expressing cancer lesions and helps assess whether the disease is localised or has spread, particularly to lymph nodes and bones. The author of this article is the senior consultant and HOD, nuclear medicine and PET-CT at Cancer Centers of America, SPS Hospital, Ludhiana...