Amyloid PET’s clinical cachet has soared with the arrival of anti-amyloid drugs, shifting AD from a largely clinical diagnosis to a biologically anchored, scan-confirmed entity. This piece dissects how PET clarifies eligibility—especially when fluid biomarkers leave room for doubt—and enables monitoring in the hands of clinicians wary of undertreatment or overtreatment. But precision comes with a price. The infrastructure needs of PET, from staff to scanner slots, provoke hard questions about workflow, equity, and expense. Hub-and-spoke models and selective imaging, guided by triage biomarkers, are touted as workarounds, but patchy access and institutional inertia may keep PET from being as tidy a solution as the guidelines hope.
Amyloid PET After Drug Approval: Is More Scanning Better Alzheimer’s Care or a Systemic Bottleneck?
How should health systems integrate amyloid PET into Alzheimer’s care after the rise of anti-amyloid therapies, and does the growing reliance on scanning clarify, or complicate, diagnosis and follow-up?