Nuclear medicine is more than a patient drinking an "atomic cocktail" to help doctors diagnose a problem. It´s an animated image of a throbbing heart, a detailed functional map of the brain, and the targeted treatment of cancer. The health applications of nuclear medicine are advancing steadily, with efforts intensifying to reach more patients in developing countries.
The latest trends and developments are being reviewed at an IAEA scientific symposium opening 14 November 2005 in Vienna. The focus is on radiopharmaceuticals - the shortlived radioactive drugs physicians administer to patients to help them trace the body´s metabolism, diagnose disease, and develop effective treatments. Physicians, health care practitioners, and radiopharmacists from more than 70 countries are participating in topical sessions covering the full range of radiopharmaceutical development, production, and use.
The growth of nuclear medicine and imaging applications is closely linked to the availability of new radioisotopes and the discovery of new radiopharmaceuticals. Almost 10 million patients benefit from the use of radiopharmaceuticals every year, industry reports show. In total more than 25 million radiopharmaceutical imaging procedures were carried out across the world in 2000, for the diagnosis of most major diseases.
With cancer on the rise in developing countries, one topic of emerging interest is the therapeutic role of radiopharmaceuticals. While surgery remains the most effective method for managing cancer, radiopharmaceuticals can be used as preferred markers. Surgeons use the markers for identifying metastatic lymph nodes and helping them achieve better precision in removing tumours. Accordingly, a new modality - called radioguided surgery (RIGS) - is emerging for use in hospitals and clinics. Promising advances also are seen in targeted therapy for cancer management where the need for therapeutic radioisotopes - such as lutetium-77 and yttrium-90 - is expected to grow. Such treatment can be highly specific in its ability to deliver a radiation dose to the tumour.
Many established diagnostic applications involve the radionuclide technetium-99m, which has a half-life of six hours. Physicians use a sophisticated instrument called a gamma camera to observe how the element moves and how organs and tissues behave. Another spectacular development in the field is advances involving fluorine-18 - they have opened the regular clinical use of positron emission tomography (PET), especially for cancer imaging.
In many countries, radiopharmaceuticals are produced using research reactors or equipment known as a cyclotron, originally developed for nuclear physics research. Global trends show significant growth in the installation of new cyclotrons to produce radionuclides for a range of medical applications. The short half-life of most radioisotopes makes it important for the process to be automated and localized.
For more information on the symposium and related topics, see Story Resources.