PATIENT INFORMATION

• Location
• Operating hours
• Staff
• What to expect
• Scheduling
• Coverage

LOCATION

The PET Center is located on the third floor of the Silverstein (adjacent to the Donner Building of the University of Pennsylvania Medical Center, 3400 Spruce Street, Philadelphia PA 19104-4283.

PET Center telephone : 215-662-7662 or 215-349-5850. For further directions follow this link.

OPERATING HOURS

The PET Center is normally open from 8:00 am to 8:00 pm Monday to Friday.

STAFF

Physicians

• Chaitanya Divgi, MD, Chief of Nuclear Medicine
• Abass Alavi , MD, Nuclear Medicine
• Andrew Newberg, MD, Nuclear Medicine
• Luis Araujo, MD, Nuclear Cardiology

Technologists

• Joseph Maffei, CNMT, Chief Tech, Nuclear Medicine

Operations

• Joel Karp, PhD, Director of PET Center and Physics &Instrumentation Group
• Richard Freifelder, PhD, Cyclotron Facility Manager
• Janet Saffer, PhD, Clinical Physicist

WHAT TO EXPECT

Pre-preparation

Your physician will refer you for a PET study. You will be scheduled for the PET study at a given day and time. You may be asked to fast and refrain from medications for the 12 hours preceding the study (water may still be taken). If you are a woman of child bearing age a pregnancy test may be performed to protect the foetus and for legal radiation safety purposes.

Upon arrival

The technologists will check your details (including your weight for dose calculation) and obtain your consent for the study You will provided with information on the study. The technologists and/or attending physician will answer any questions you may have A pinprick blood sample will be taken to obtain your blood glucose level on-the-spot. You will be administered a labelled glucose injection. This contains a small amount of radioactive glucose. There are no side effects from this.

The scan

One hour after the radioactive glucose injection the technologist will get you to lie on the patient pallet(bed) and will position you in the camera. The cameras (for more informations about our cameras click here) are donut shaped to surround your head or body during the scan. The camera makes no significant noise during the scans It is important that you do not move about during the scans as this may blurr the images and/or result in artifacts in the images which make the study less valuable The technologist will explain the details of the scans to be performed and how long it will take. For brain scans this is typically 30 minutes. For whole-body scans this is typically 60 minutes. For cardiac FDG scans this is 40 minutes. For cardiac rest-stress ammonia (myocardial blood flow) the duration is 90 minutes.

After the study

The technologist will help you from the scanner and asky ou to wait while the preliminary images are checked. The fully processed images are generally completed before the end of the day. These images are read by specially trained physicians who then dictate a report of the results. This report is faxed to the referring physician who will notify you.

SCHEDULING

Appointment and insurance pre-certification requirements. Because of the heavy demand for PET studies, PET scans should be scheduled as far in advance as possible through the PET Center coordinator

tel #:215-662--3000 reports #: 215-662-3058.

Patient information required from the patient will include patient name, other demographic information, name of the referring physician, detailed diagnosis and insurance information.

COVERAGE

At the time of writing, many types of PET studies are Medicare approved. Insurance coverage is on a case-by-case basis by the various insurance carriers.

For insurance and billing information please call (215) 662-7796.

Last Revision: Oct 24, 2006

---