By Isabella Benjumea – WJHG — Published: Oct. 31, 2024 at 6:25 PM CDT

PANAMA CITY, Fla. (WJHG/WECP) – Hope Regional Medical Center in Panama City is now using a powerful new diagnostic tool in the fight against Prostate Cancer.

Doctors at the center have always used CT and bone scans to treat all cancer patients, but now they’re offering the new “Disruptive” Prostate Cancer Imaging. This is done through a PSMA PET scan, which uses a radioactive tracing agent that shows 3D images to pinpoint the location of cancer cells within the body.

“We inject a special nucleotide called ‘posluma’ into the patient, and that nucleotide then finds the prostate cancer cells in the membrane of the prostate cancer cells, and attaches with the specific protein called PSMA, and that emits an x-ray, which can then be detected by a camera, when the patient is scanned in the cancer center,” said Hasan Murshed, Radiation Oncologist at Hope Regional Medical Center.

Doctors say that this will allow them to detect prostate cancer at an early stage and allow them to be much more precise in their treatment planning. “With the PSMA scan, we can pick up cancers sooner and stage them properly, and if we can catch the cancer early, we can then treat them early and we can cure this patient as well,” said Murshed.

According to Doctor Murshed, over 300,000 people in the United States are diagnosed with prostate cancer yearly, and about 30,000 of those will die. But with the PSMA PET scan, many lives can be saved.