What is Nuclear Medicine?

It's a study that uses certain types of radiation tagged to certain pharmaceuticals that is given to patients to find out information about their situation.

When your doctor wants to find out something and orders a study the technologist will decide how much radiation and what kind with the history of the request.

Normally then the technologist will order the doses from a contractor like General Electric or Cardinal Health or may order a generator to make the doses at their own department.

Which ever they decide to do they will plan 24hrs prior to you arriving and then will have the dose calculated for a specific time and date. When a technologist says it's very important to be on time, it is; that's because the amount calculated for the patient at that time will decay to a smaller amount shortly after.

The goal is to have enough radiation to image so when the exam is over hardly any is left in the patient.

Patient safety is a must and a top priority in every Nuclear Medicine department.

When the patient arrives the dose is given and normally waits for a certain period prior to scanning allowing time for the tracer ( radiopharmaceutical ) to go where it needs to in the body.

Depending on the study will depict the type of imaging or diagnostic procedure done.

Than the technologist will then process the study for the Nuclear Medicine doctor or the Radiologist to read.

So that's a general outline of Nuclear Medicine. I hope this helps you if you are curious.

Some types of Studies in Nuclear Medicine:

• Myocardial Perfusion Study aka Myoview / Stress test / Mibi
• Bone imaging
• Bone Marrow
• Bone SPECT (Single Positron Computed Tomography)
• Thyroid Uptake and Scan
• Thyroid Ablation
• Hida
• Meckels Diverticuli
• GI Bleed (Gastrointestinal)
• Sentinal Localization Scintiography

Some types of Radiation used in Nuclear Medicine:

Tc-99m:

This isotope is generally used for most routine studies since if gives a love energy level (est 140KeV). It also has a short half-life of about 6 hours which makes the total exposure much less than most isotopes.

Some studies that usually use this isotope is certain heart studies, some bone imaging, hidas as well, and some others.

I-123:

This isotope is usually used for thyroid uptake and scan studies when looking for a persons thyroid activity.

I-131:

This isotope is for therapy and sometimes for quatitative studies.

When a person is having problems with there thyroid they may need to get it removed. That's what this isotope is for, it's usually in the form of a pill that is swallowed.

Special precautions and considerations apply more for this isotope than some of the other isotopes. The reason for this is since it's a iodine based substance it can be released through sweat glands, saliva, and urine. So when this study is performed the technologist or the Radiation Safety Officer will go over all the parameters prior to dose.

Co-57:

This is normally used only for quality control purposes and not for patient administration. Since this isotope has a long half-life and a similar energy to Tc-99m it gives a good source for checking calibrations on Isotope instruments.

Every morning prior to any patients arrival every Nuclear Medicine department performs many tests to make sure that all cameras and instruments are performing appropriately.

Eu-152:

Like Co-57 this isotope is really good during quality control procedures. Not every department uses this isotope for QC purposes.

Of course there is a lot more that imcompasses this career field as you can imagine; but I just wanted to shed a littl light on some who haven't heard much about it.