Executive Director: Robert P. Powell 101 West Broad Street Suite 614 Hazleton, PA 18201 Phone: 570-501-9661 Fax: 570-450-0863 Email: rpowell@ptd.net

Editor: Eduard V. Kotlyarov, M.D., Ph.D.,FACNM POH Medical Center/Lapeer Regional Hospital/McCready Foundation Incs 50 N. Perry Street Pontiac, MI 48342 TEL: (248) 338-5608 FAX: (248) 338-5605

Rembember, the ACNM Report is available on the Internet at the following home page: http://www.acnucmed.com

MEMBERSHIP...
All inquiries and requests for membership application to the American College of Nuclear Medicine should be directed to the Executive Director, Robert P. Powell.

PRESIDENTIAL MESSAGE
Richard Campeau, MD, FACNM

Wishing Happy Holidays to all

We hope for a blessed holiday season with family and friends, and a happy and prosperous new year. Our annual meeting (information included) in Orlando, Florida may prove to be the best in many years. The hotel is in Disney World proper at the Royal Plaza so plan on joining us for a quality CME, fellowship, and fun for the whole family. I hope to see you all there and plan on making time for the Friday evening convocation followed by the President's reception.

CHAIRMAN, BOARD OF REPRESENTATIVES
Harry J. Lessig, MD, FACNM, FACNP

As Chairman of the Board of Representatives I have continued to embrace the concept that for our College to continue to move forward in our present medical maze; we need to make a special impact on the Nuclear Medical Community, much of which is now performed in radiology and cardiology by physicians who are not full time nuclear physicians. The areas I feel we should focus upon are:

1. Education of colleagues
2. Membership
3. Leadership
4. Finances
5. Fellowship
6. College longevity

Your Executive Committee with recommendations from the Blue Ribbon Committee has been more than diligent on reviewing each of these matters during our annual meetings, at the National Society of Nuclear Medicine meeting in Washington, DC and through many teleconferences. It is taking a great deal of time to assess all the ramifications of these proposed changes, since this will shape our college for the next several decades. While progress may appear slow we are in the final discussions with the American College of Nuclear Physicians and the Society of Nuclear Medicine to strengthen and brighten the future of Nuclear Medicine and the physicians who practice this modality. Hopefully results of these negotiations will be discussed at our Annual Meeting in Orlando, Florida March 28-30, 2008.

The program committee continues to produce an out standing cutting edge educational experiences at a reasonable cost. This year will be no exception with stellar discussions of new imaging approaches with PET/CT and SPECT/CT by known experts presenting updated clinically useful data for the practicing nuclear medicine physician. Our clinical experts will cover the topics of cancer detection and prognosis with respect to lung, GI, prostate and esophageal tumors, cardiology, and infection to mention a few of these areas.

As always our annual scientific sessions will begin with our fellowship convocation and President's reception. Following this will be the scientific sessions.

Please continue to recruit your colleagues and associates to join our college ranks. If you have a fellowship program or residency program - radiology, nuclear medicine, or cardiology at you facility, remember trainees can join at no charge and in the early years of clinical practice membership fees are reduced.

When you receive your annual dues notice, please respond rapidly and affirmatively so we can continue all of our programs.

With the beginning of a new calendar year our future looks bright as we look to align ourselves with other colleges and organizations with similar goals and aspirations.

May we all have a Happy and Healthy Holiday season followed by a prosperous New Year.

See you at our Annual Scientific Meeting in Orlando, Florida on March 28th - March 30th 2008!

DEFICIT REDUCTION ACT (DRA)
Robert Powell, Executive Director

I like to refer to the Deficit Reduction Act as the destruction of radiology act. What is it and why was it necessary.

Simply it is the reduction by Medicare of the technical component payment of major imaging studies on outpatient non-hospital owned imaging.

The reductions are necessary according to Medicare in order to reduce to a degree the deficit they face in funding /payments. The amount of money which Medicare takes in is no longer sufficient to pay total claims. Obviously, people are utilizing imaging as well as other services more often, living longer, and are growing in numbers.

Imaging is the single largest growth cost to Medicare and many other third party payors in recent years. That growth is more than double the overall growth in all medical costs exceeding 15 percent per year in each of the last three years.

Our concern is the 40 percent plus which has been assigned to PET. While no statistic is available as yet the effect is certainly being felt.

With limited information available to me it appears purchases of new units are down as well profits of existing units. Financing of new units is now approaching the seven year payoff rather than five.

Fortunately it does not seem to affect availability and may actually increase availability. In the long term the effect of DRA reduces the number of units in the market place, but the remaining units appear to be increasing there hours and we indeed may have more hours of usage in the future then exists at the present time. While information may be available in time for the numbers of units in service it will not ever be able to tell us who would have purchased the units that now will not.

I hope the effect on your practices has been minimal to none, but we would love to know and you can email us at rpowell@ptd.net.

Wishing everyone a happy holiday and a prosperous new year.

35TH ANNUAL MEETING BEING HELD IN ORLANDO, FLORIDA

We would like to thank Dr. Hossein Jadvar for his help in building our educational program this year. We are pleased with the variety of topics this year and hope everyone can join us at the Royal Plaza in Walt Disney World, and the dates are March 28 - 30, 2008. To contact the Royal Plaza hotel to make reservations please call 1-800-248-7890 and be sure to tell them you are a participant of the American College of Nuclear Medicine annual meeting.

Some of the topics this year are:
Initial Experience with F-DOPA and NaF at a Cancer Center
PET-CT Problems and Pitfalls; Physiologic and Benign Causes of FDG Uptake
PET and PET-CT in Prostate Cancer
Emerging Clinical Applications of PET-CT Fluoride Bone Scans
Myocardial Perfusion Imaging - Take Two
Imaging Vunerable Plaque, Prospects for Imaging Infection and Inflammation with FDG-PET
Therapy Assessment with PET and PET-CT
Novel Quantitative Techniques for Assessing Structure/Function Relation in Normal and Disease States
PET and PET-CT in GI Malignancies
PET/CT Imaging of Lung Cancer
PET-CT in GIST
PET-CT Imaging of Esophageal Cancer
PET-CT in Lymphoma

And the lists of speakers are: Abass Alavi, MD, Homer Macapinlac, MD, Simin Dadparvar, MD, Robert J. McDonald, MD, Hossein Jadvar, MD, PhD, MPH, MBA, George Segall, MD, Lale Kostacoglu MD, MPH, and H. William Strauss, MD

ACNM Moments 2007