TEACHING EDITORIAL The Utility of Gallium-ST in Tumor Imaging: A Comment on the Final Reports of the Cooperative Study Group

The cooperative group formed to study the value of gallium-67 imaging in malignant disease has now published its final report on malignant lymphoma (7). This report comple ments two previous "final reports " on Hodgkin's disease (2) and genitourinary tract tumors (.?), as well as a series of preliminary reports on Hodgkin's disease (4), malignant lym phoma (5), and lung carcinoma (6). The results obtained by the cooperative group illus trate the strengths and the weaknesses of this type of study. The project was undertaken in the early 1970's to determine if Ga-67 was a useful agent in staging cancer. The cooperative study group set out to answer this question using the best techniques and instrumentation then available. However, this question was answered in large part by the preliminary reports of the cooperative group, as well as by a number of other clinical observations published between 1971 and 1975. By 1974 it had become obvi ous that Ga-67 imaging would be useful primarily as an adjunctive test in evaluating specific tumor. Concern then shifted to determining the value of Ga-67 imaging in monitoring treatment of patients and attempting to improve the techniques of such imaging. Unfortunately, the c