A PET CT scan combines a radioactive tracer that highlights metabolically active tissue with a CT scan that pinpoints its location, producing one whole-body image. It is used to stage cancer, track treatment response, find recurrence, assess heart-muscle viability or localise seizure activity.
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FDG, PSMA and DOTANOC are completely different tests that happen to use the same scanner. Booking the wrong one wastes the trip. Tap your situation.
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Whole-body FDG
The standard skull-base-to-mid-thigh cancer scan. Radioactive glucose highlights any tissue burning sugar abnormally fast. Used for staging, restaging, response assessment and finding an unknown primary. Needs a 6-hour fast and a blood sugar under about 150–200 mg/dL.
Self-pay list prices, indicative only. Even with flights and a hotel for two people, the trip usually costs less than the scan alone elsewhere.
Indicative all-inclusive ranges for international patients. Diagnostic contrast CT, a same-day report, sedation for children and repeat delayed imaging are the usual extras. You get a written figure before you travel and nothing is added afterwards.
Four questions. No sign-up, no phone number.
"Radioactive" is a frightening word. Here is the whole-body fdg dose measured against things you already do without thinking.
chest X-rays' worth
of natural background radiation
ten-hour flights
The dose is real and worth respecting — which is why we will tell you when a PET CT would not change the decision. It is justified whenever the result changes what happens next.
How much radiation is really in a PET CT? See below
A PET CT is not a difficult test — but it is easy to get wrong at home. This is exactly how the day runs, and what ruins a scan.
FDG is glucose. If the blood is already full of sugar, the tracer never reaches the tumour. Slide to your usual fasting reading.
Ideal
Perfect window. The tracer goes where it should — into tumour, not into muscle.
The standard skull-base-to-mid-thigh cancer scan. Radioactive glucose highlights any tissue burning sugar abnormally fast. Used for staging, restaging, response assessment and finding an unknown primary. Needs a 6-hour fast and a blood sugar under about 150–200 mg/dL.
Targets prostate-specific membrane antigen. It finds prostate cancer deposits that FDG and MRI miss — often at a PSA as low as 0.2 ng/mL — and decides whether disease is still confined to the prostate bed or has spread. No fasting needed.
Binds somatostatin receptors, which neuroendocrine tumours carry in abundance. It locates carcinoid, pancreatic NETs, paragangliomas and phaeochromocytomas, and confirms whether a patient is a candidate for PRRT (Lu-177 DOTATATE). Long-acting octreotide should be paused before the scan.
Answers one question before heart surgery: is this weak muscle dead scar, or hibernating muscle that will recover after bypass or stenting? A glucose-insulin protocol loads the heart with FDG, and perfusion imaging is compared with metabolism to map viability segment by segment.
A dedicated high-resolution brain study. FDG brain PET localises the seizure focus in drug-resistant epilepsy and separates Alzheimer's from frontotemporal and vascular dementia; amyloid PET directly images plaque burden.
Most patients are scanned and home inside 72 hours.
Biopsy or histopathology report, recent CT/MRI/ultrasound, tumour markers, and the referring doctor's note. Photos of paper reports are fine.
A nuclear medicine specialist confirms whether it should be FDG, PSMA, DOTANOC, cardiac or brain PET — and whether a PET is even the right next test, or whether a cheaper scan would answer the question.
One figure with the tracer inside it, plus any add-on such as diagnostic contrast CT, and an invitation letter for the medical visa if you are travelling.
PET tracers are made the same morning and decay in hours, so the slot and the dose are booked together. Ga-68 PSMA and DOTANOC run on fixed generator days — we hold you a place.
Airport pickup, hotel within walking distance of the department, and a call the evening before to confirm the fast, your diabetes medication and the arrival time.
Registration, glucose check, injection, the quiet uptake hour, then a 20-minute scan. You are free by lunchtime and can fly the same evening.
PDF report, DICOM download link, and a tumour-board style opinion on what should happen next — treatment plan, cost, and where it can be done.
PET CT is the most accurate whole-body staging test available, but it is not a lie detector for cancer. Knowing where it is weak is what stops a wrong decision being made on the back of it.
A whole-body PET CT delivers roughly 8 mSv — about two to three years of the radiation you receive anyway from the ground, food and the sky. It is a real dose, and it is justified when a scan will change what happens next.
The tracer is not iodinated contrast. There is no allergy risk, no kidney load, no heat flush and no taste. Almost nobody feels the injection at all.
Drink 2–3 litres and pass urine often. Keep a metre away from pregnant women and small children for the rest of the day. By the next morning virtually nothing is left — F-18 halves every 110 minutes.
Pregnancy, unless the benefit is overwhelming. Breastfeeding needs a pause of a few hours with milk expressed beforehand. Uncontrolled diabetes needs sorting first, and claustrophobia is rarely an issue — the ring is open at both ends.
No forms, no payment, no obligation. A nuclear medicine specialist reads your diagnosis and imaging, tells you whether a PET CT will change anything, which tracer to use, what it costs and the earliest slot.
We reply on WhatsApp within 1 hour. Your reports are never shared with anyone else.
Most patients fly in, scan, and fly home within 72 hours. We arrange the paperwork so that the trip is about the scan and nothing else.
"Two CT scans said nothing while her CEA kept climbing. The PET found a 9 mm node behind the liver. Surgery a week later, and she is clear."
"PSA 0.4 after prostate surgery and nobody could tell us where it was coming from. PSMA PET showed one pelvic node. Radiotherapy to that spot only."
"Flew Tuesday, scanned Wednesday morning, report Thursday, home Friday. It cost less than the flights."
A PET CT scan is two scans in one. A tiny amount of a radioactive sugar or protein-seeking tracer is injected into a vein; cells that are metabolically hyperactive — most cancers, infections and inflammation — soak it up far more than normal tissue. The PET camera maps that activity, and a CT taken in the same breath-hold shows exactly which organ, node or bone the hot spot sits in. The result is a single whole-body picture, usually eyes to thighs, that shows disease before it has changed the shape of anything. It is the test that decides stage, tells you whether chemotherapy is working, separates scar from live tumour, and finds the primary when only a secondary has been found.
Still unsure which scan you need? Read what it actually is
No forms, no payment, no obligation. A nuclear medicine specialist reads your diagnosis and imaging, tells you whether a PET CT will change anything, which tracer to use, what it costs and the earliest slot.
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