By Chang Hsuan-che and Jake Chung / Staff reporter, with staff writerAddressing public concern over how to detect and treat esophageal cancer, doctors urged people to include a positron emission tomography (PET) scan to their annual checkup routines to enable earlier discovery of tumors. Doctors persuaded Yang to include a PET scan in his checkup, which led them to discover that Yang had first-stage esophageal cancer. Treating esophageal cancer requires surgical removal of the tumor, but if the cancer cells have spread to the lymph node, presurgical radiation therapy and chemotherapy are required, Tseng said. A PET scan is noninvasive and allows for quick diagnosis, as it has high-quality anatomical reconstructive imaging, he said. PET scans also allow doctors to better assess the effects of chemotherapy and radiation therapy, Tseng added.

Source: Taipei Times February 01, 2019 16:06 UTC