A trial using PET scans to see how well chemotherapy is working for people with cancer of the pancreas

This trial was looking at whether PET scans can show how well chemotherapy is working for people with pancreatic cancer.

Doctors often use chemotherapy to treat pancreatic cancer. They usually do a CT scan to see if the treatment is working.

PET scans are a different type of scan. Doctors already use PET scans to measure cancer spread. But researchers hoped they might be able to help to show if a new treatment was working.

Before you have a PET scan, you have an injection of a small amount of a radioactive drug. In this trial, they used a drug called FDG which is radioactive sugar. When you have the PET scan, the FDG can show up cancer because cancer cells use glucose in a different way from normal tissue.

This aim of this trial was to look at the relationship between the amount of FDG taken up by the cancer and the length of time people lived after treatment.