Radiation Exploited in Most Nuclear Medicine Procedures - Essay Example

Radiation exploited in most nuclear medicine procedures Gamma radiations have long been used in nuclear medicine. The use has been both therapeutic and diagnostic. The procedure has a technical aspect and a scientific aspect in which it becomes useful. The technical aspect involves injection of a radioactive tracer inside the body and then it is directed to a place where there is an abnormality or pathology. Once the tracer gets to the place of pathology, the technical part will have achieved its goal (Hada, 2014).

Most of the radioactive tracers are introduced by injection while others are through inhalations or even orally. Once, there, they will emit radiations that then the camera gamma camera will capture and display the type of pathology without any surgical procedure. Recently, there has been development where a more sophisticated radiation has been put into use- position emission tomography-, which on technical and scientific aspects works as gamma-ray radiation. Only that it has a two-ray radiation detected making the area examined clearer (Hada, 2014).

Patient preparation Preparation of a patient mostly is dependent on the type of procedure that will be performed. Allergy must be checked for radioactive tracer material used. Some of the procedures such as a bone scan do not need intensive patient preparation, but some require. A good example is a thyroid body scan. When a patient is being prepared for a thyroid test he or she should be instructed to speak with the technologist directly before the procedure is undertaken. The patient should be instructed to stop all thyroid medication since they may be falsely detected as pathology with the machine.

Before stopping the medication, they should seek clarification from the doctor. The patients sometimes are instructed to fast for two hours for the effectiveness of the nuclear medicine procedure (Chia-Ho, 2014). The advantages and limitations of nuclear medicine have many advantages. One is the advantage painless and less not invasive. It can help to diagnose, treat even predict the outcome for a wide range of conditions without causing a lot of trauma to the patient. It helps detect pathology within the body at an early time in turn can help control the condition ahead of time.

Nuclear medicine can also help to check how well the cancers are responding to therapy. Nuclear medicines also have a share of disadvantages and limitations. It involves exposure to ionizing radiation that can cause mutation if they are in huge doses. Some of the radioactive tracer materials injected into bodies have an allergic reaction that can be very detrimental. Hence, it is necessary to test for the presence of allergy with radioactive tracer material before the nuclear medicine procedure is commenced.

A time sedation may be needed because of nuclear medicine procedure time make the patient feels claustrophobic (Mititelu, 2014)Ailment is diagnosed and treated via nuclear medicine procedures Most of the ailments that are diagnosed and treated with nuclear medicine are internal. This ailment will otherwise require a surgical procedure to be done for the diagnosis or therapeutic procedure to be done. With nuclear medicine, no invasive procedure is needed instead it’s a radioactive tracer material that is needed (Mititelu, 2014).

The ailments include cancers even at their developmental stage, cardiac diseases such as myocardial infarction and cerebral vascular accident (stroke)Applications of nuclear medicine relating to Positron Emission Tomography (PET) scans PET mostly applied in oncology, with fluorine-18 as the tracer, because it is an accurate and non-invasive method of detecting cancers. Also used in cardiac and brain imaging. Combination PET with computed tomography (CT) scans gives co-registration of the two images (PETCT), resulting to a 30% better diagnosis than gamma camera alone.