How long do PET scan results take?

After the scan, the technologist checks that the images are in focus before you leave. That check isn't a read. A radiologist with PET training reads the scan later, compares it with your earlier scans, writes the report and signs it. The summary at the end, the Impression, is the part of the report that matters most. How to read a radiology report walks through the rest of it.

Hospitals publish different targets for that read. Cleveland Clinic says it usually takes 24 to 48 hours. Memorial Sloan Kettering says your doctor should have the results in 2 business days, and Advocate Health says within three business days. Mayo Clinic only says a few days, depending on the medical center.

Some of those targets count business days, so a weekend or a holiday adds to the wait. When a result is needed sooner, the oncologist can ask for it. Advocate says your doctor may call the nuclear medicine physician on the day of the exam, and NewYork-Presbyterian says the radiologist may discuss early results with your oncologist right after the scan.

Because the report goes to the doctor, and many oncologists give PET results at a visit. MD Anderson tells patients that your doctor will discuss the results at your next appointment. That visit goes on the clinic's calendar, not the radiologist's, so it can land the same day or weeks later.

You can see it in what patients post. One person living with metastatic breast cancer had to wait more than a week after a PET for the appointment to talk it over. A family wrote that their appointment to hear the result was three weeks out. And someone else had the PET in the morning and saw the oncologist that afternoon. Same scan, same read time. The booking is the difference.

England's NHS times the whole wait, scan to patient, instead of only the read, and it says PET results usually take 1 or 2 weeks. That's the two legs added together.

Sometimes the second leg stalls for no reason at all. One patient waited two weeks, then learned the report had been ready within a few days and no one had told the doctor. A short call to the office is how you find that out.

Often, yes. Under federal rules in force since April 5, 2021, a hospital generally can't hold your results back just so your doctor sees them first. So the report may post to your portal as soon as it's signed, sometimes before anyone calls. RadiologyInfo, the patient site run by the radiology societies, says your doctor may upload the report before calling you.

Each health system still sets its own routine. The University of Rochester's medical center says PET results are sent to your doctor within two business days and posted to MyChart in 14 days. So if your portal is empty a day after the scan, that usually says more about your hospital's settings than about the scan.

If you'd rather hear it from your doctor first, you can ask for that. Federal health IT guidance says a hospital that follows a patient's own request to delay release, for example until the clinician has reviewed it, probably isn't breaking the rule. One patient agreed with their doctor that the report isn't released until the office calls, 'so I know at least a phone call is coming.'

If you'd rather see it the moment it posts, that's a reasonable choice too. Reading your results before your doctor calls covers how to read the report in that gap without spiraling. For the words you're most likely to meet on a PET report, see what hypermetabolic means on a PET scan.

The second leg is set before the scan happens, so that's when to ask. Memorial Sloan Kettering tells its patients to ask the doctor how they'll share the results. Four questions cover it:

Who will tell us the result, and by what day? When is the results visit, and can it be booked within a day or two of the scan? Will the report post to the portal before we talk, and can you hold it until you've called, or release it right away? If we hear nothing by that day, who do we call?

If the day passes, call the office of the doctor who ordered the scan, not the imaging center. Ask whether the report has been signed. If it has, ask when the doctor will go over it with you. If it hasn't, ask whether it can be read sooner. If nobody gave you a date and you've heard nothing three business days after the scan, call anyway. That's the outer edge of the published read times.

For a CT, MRI, X-ray or biopsy instead, how long scan and biopsy results take has the times for each.