18 LONGISLANDPRESS.COM • JANUARY 2019
NYCBS Holds Ribbon-Cutting for
State-of-the-Art PET/CT Scanner
NYCBS recently held a groundbreaking ceremony for
its state-of-the-art facility in Port Jefferson Station,
which is expected to open before summer 2019.
“When the Riverhead facility opens in March, it
will be replacing a smaller office that is there now,”
Dr. Avvento said.
Asked what sets NYCBS apart from other medical
facilities that provide similar services, Pakal told the
Press: “We provide comprehensive cancer care to our
patients. Patients can see their physicians, receive
chemotherapy, get necessary blood drawn, and now
in-house radiology exams in one visit.”
The NYCBS Southampton Medical Oncology office,
which employs about 40 dedicated staff members in
all, is located at 640 County Road 39, in Southampton.
Its hours are 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday.
For more information, call the NYCBS office at 631-751-
3000 or visit nycancer.com
New York Cancer & Blood Specialists (NYCBS) held a
ribbon-cutting ceremony on December 19 for its first
combination Positron Emission Tomography (PET)/
Computed Tomography (CT) scanner at its Southampton
office.
It is the only one of its kind available in the Southampton
area.
“The new equipment will make it easier for residents to
obtain the medical imaging they need closer to home on
the East End,” NYCBS said. Prior to the PET/CT scanner
arriving at the Southampton office, NYCBS patients had
to travel to its East Setauket office for the same imaging
capabilities.
“The new GE Healthcare scanner is a sophisticated
piece of equipment that features the very latest in imaging
technology,” according to Ana Pakal, NYCBS radiology
manager. The machine’s PET/CT Discovery IQ “acquires
superior image quality with less scan time and
less radiation exposure to our patients than other options,”
she said.
“The PET/CT scanner is a current state-of-the-art
scanner,” according to Dr. Louis Avvento,
an oncologist and hematologist at the Southampton
facility. “It combines two separate scans:
A CT scan and a PET scan being a nuclear medicine
component,” he explained. “The two together can not
only tell us sizes of tumors, but it can also tell us activity
of tumors.
We can get images of cancer size and also cancer activity.”
“It also allows us to see progressively how somebody’s
doing with their treatment, based on
the cancer activity going down,” Dr. Avvento continued.
“Even though the tumors may look apparently the same,
if the cancer activity is diminishing, then we know that the
treatment is being effective.”
Dr. Avvento also said, “If the CT scan doesn’t detect
cancer activity based on the imaging, then the PET’s nuclear
component can pick up or detect activity in a specific area
and then we can be more specific about looking into that
area further to see if there’s any microscopic cancer there.”
“Having this scanner’s capabilities in-house for our
patients makes perfect sense,” Pakal said. “Our patients
can literally walk to our PET/CT department when they
are done seeing their medical oncologists instead of driving
somewhere else.”
Although the only other NYCBS facility that currently has
a PET/CT scanner is the main location in East Setauket
that operates seven days a week, Pakal said the goal is
to “provide
in-house radiology exams within our patients’ reach,”
wherever they live. Plans are in place for
a PET/CT scanner to be added at the NYCBS locations in
Patchogue and Riverhead, as well as its new Port Jefferson
Station cancer treatment facility,” she said.
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