Medicare now covers positive emission tomography scans

17 Jun 2002

The Health Care Financing Administration has expanded Medicare coverage to include positron emission tomography (PET) scans for the diagnoses and staging of lung cancer. Coverage became effective Jan. 1 for PET technology, which uses a sugar-based radiotracer that allows the patient to be scanned with a dedicated PET scanner or nuclear medicine camera for malignant cancer tumors that have a higher uptake of the sugar.