by Dr Evelyn Ho

Sunday was no barrier to some 100 participants at the PET/PET-CT workshop held in Hotel Armada, Petaling Jaya. There were participants from as far as Jakarta, Penang, Sarawak and Johor.

The multidisciplinary workshop was organised by the College of Radiology and conducted in collaboration with the Western Australia PET Centre, Perth Australia. This was the second in a series of seminars to gear the radiological and oncological community for the advent of this new expensive tool in the armamentarium of imaging modalities. PET/PET-CT will be one of the tools in molecular medicine and comes with limitations. “The usefulness of the scan is only as good as the information obtained and the person reporting the study”, says Dr Nat Lenzo.

Local experts included Dr Mohd Ali Abdul Khader, Consultant Radiologist and Nuclear Medicine Specialist based in the Penang Hospital. He has been involved in the setting up of two PET-CT systems and a cyclotron in Malaysia. The first PET-CT system began service in Penang Hospital since July 2005. The other local speaker was Prof Ng Kwan Hoong (PhD) from the University of Malaya Medical Centre.

Foreign experts were Dr Nat Lenzo, Dr PK Loh, Roger Price (Ph D) (medical physicist) and Christopher Jones (radiochemist).

The workshop was aimed at giving an overview of the requirements in the setting up of a PET/PET-CT service and cyclotron from the production of the radiopharmaceuticals, the delivery and finally the clinical use and limitations of PET/PET-CT. Roger Price and Christopher Jones also gave pointers on what pitfalls to avoid in the setting up of a cyclotron/radiopharmaceutical facility. The need for a committed multi-disciplined team as well as a PET radio-pharmacy production facility of the highest standards were again emphasised.

The afternoon session saw a natural attrition of participants but those that stayed were active in the interdisciplinary panel Q & A session with the speakers. The flourodeoxyglucose synthesis workshop held interest particularly for the nuclear medicine practitioners.