NEWPORT NEWS, Va., June 22 /PRNewswire/ — Dilon Diagnostics,
the industry leader in molecular breast imaging, today announced
that the Society of Nuclear Medicine Procedure Guidelines Committee
has released The SNM Procedure Guideline for Breast Scintigraphy
with Breast-Specific Gamma Cameras. This protocol serves as a guide
to clinicians performing Breast-Specific Gamma Imaging (BSGI) to
ensure optimal clinical results. This protocol will help improve
the understanding of how and when to use this molecular breast
imaging technique and the appropriate CPT coding for BSGI.
Mammography is very useful in the detection of breast cancer,
but for some women, the mammogram can be difficult to interpret due
to the presence of complex, dense breast tissue. In such cases,
detecting cancer with mammography is similar to finding one cloud
in a cloudy sky. With BSGI, the patient receives a pharmaceutical
tracing agent that is absorbed by all the cells in the body. Due to
their increased rate of metabolic activity, cancerous cells in the
breast absorb a greater amount of the tracing agent than normal,
healthy cells and generally appear as focal areas on the BSGI
image. As a result, BSGI can see lesions independent of breast
tissue density and discover early stage cancers hidden by complex
breast tissue. Several studies have determined that combining BSGI
and mammography greatly improves the detection of breast cancer
over the use of either imaging study alone.
“The introduction of a procedural protocol by the Society of
Nuclear Medicine represents the goal of the Society to establish
and maintain the highest standard of quality in nuclear medicine
imaging studies,” according to Dr. Stanley
Goldsmith, past president of the society and lead author of
the new protocol. He continued by saying, “In order to opti
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