Is there anyone out there waiting for a PSMA pet scan?
My partner had his prostate removed in January, unfortunately his PSA level has risen again so he is awaiting a PSMA PET scan to try and find where the cancer has gone.
The Queen Alexandra Hospital in Portsmouth have run out of injections for the scan and can't get any. They told him this two weeks ago. He then had a call last week to book him for a scan yesterday. He then received a call on the day of the scan to cancel it stating they had no injections! They said it could be at least another two weeks. Where do we go from here? He had a Gleeson score of 9 so obviously the waiting is very worrying. What can we do? Is there anywhere private we could go to get it done?
There isn't enough provision for manufacturing the PSMA PET tracer in the UK. The manufacturing process is unreliable in any case, and the tracer has no shelf life, so they won't know until a few hours beforehand if they have any usable tracer. It's not uncommon for it to be cancelled on the day, but the lack of provision makes this worse because there's no spare capacity to fall back on. If he's close enough to get to the hospital at an hour or two's notice, let them know and they might be able to pull him in at short notice to cover for a cancellation.
Catcole,there is a genesis centre at Oxford,the supply of the tracer there is very reliable. You will need around £4k. Remember there is no guarantee the scan will find anything.
Thanks Chris
Private PET-CT scan costs at GenesisCare
68Gallium PSMA PET-CT – from £2,500
68Gallium Dotatate PET-CT – from £2,500
18F FDG PET-CT half body – from £1,400
18F FDG PET-CT full body – from £1,600
It was quite a wait but thankfully he has had it now. It showed cancer in a lymph node in his bowel, which wasn’t the news we hoped for. Starting radiotherapy soon so we’re hopeful it will zap it 🤞
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