How good is a PSMA PET Scan at finding Prostate Cancer?

Of all available conventional and advanced imaging studies available today, PSMA PET Scans with PSMA (18F-DCFPyL) have been found to identify more prostate cancer lesions than any other imaging study. If you or someone you love has prostate cancer, you may have had CT scans, bone scans, MRI scans, or other PET studies such as FDG PET Scans. While each of these studies has its pros and cons, only PSMA PET Scans have the overall power to sensitively detect prostate cancer -and- specifically, characterize these findings as prostate cancer. Some tests, such as bone scans, are very sensitive and can detect many findings in the skeleton. However, bone scans are not specific, and many non-cancerous sources of uptake such as arthritis or prior injury can “light up” on a bone scan. While MRI is excellent at evaluating the prostate gland itself, it does not evaluate the whole body like PSMA PET scans do. PSMA PET Scans can not only detect many prostate cancer lesions, but when positive, it has a very high likelihood of representing prostate cancer as well.