Ultrasound

Ultrasound

The use of this test to look at the breast was discussed earlier in this section. But
ultrasound can also be used to look for cancer that has spread to some other parts of the
body.
Abdominal ultrasound can be used to look for tumors in your liver or other abdominal
organs. When you have an abdominal ultrasound exam, you simply lie on a table and a
technician moves the transducer on the skin over the part of your body being examined.
Usually, the skin is first lubricated with gel.
Positron emission tomography (PET) scan
For a PET scan, glucose (a form of sugar) that contains a radioactive atom is injected into
the bloodstream. Because cancer cells in the body are growing rapidly, they absorb large
amounts of the radioactive sugar. After about an hour, a special camera is used to create a
picture of areas of radioactivity in the body.
A PET scan is useful when your doctor thinks the cancer might have spread but doesn't
know where. The picture is not finely detailed like a CT or MRI scan, but it provides
helpful information about your whole body. Some newer machines are able to do both a
PET and CT scan at the same time (PET/CT scan). This lets the radiologist compare areas
of higher radioactivity on the PET with the appearance of that area on the CT.
So far, most studies show PET scans aren't very helpful in early breast cancer, but they
may be used for very large tumors, inflammatory breast cancer, or for breast cancers that
are known to have spread.