Nuclear Bone Scan - Essay Example

Specifically, the bone scintigraphy procedure substitutes the use of X-rays since it is more sensitive and can reveal a wide array of bone diseases at early stages. Despite the use of radioactive elements such as technetium-99m as a tracer agent during the therapy, the element has a short half-life of six hours. Therefore, a nuclear bone scan should fully substitute standard X-ray since it is cheaper, more effective, and safer.

Patient Preparation
Physicians prescribe no dietary restrictions to a patient who should undergo bone scintigraphy therapy. On the other hand, doctors exclude patients who take bismuth drugs or have undergone barium x-ray treatment (Bowlen & Cain, 2020). More specifically, the exclusion time for a patient who has either consumed bismuth drugs or had an x-ray with barium contrast element is four days before the nuclear bone scan.

Similarly, nursing and pregnant women should be excluded since the radioactive tracer materials have adverse side effects on infants. Moreover, patients should inform the clinician of their allergic reaction to certain drugs such as iodine. They should not wear jewelry and dress in a therapeutic gown. Lastly, the patient should drink eight glasses of water during the therapy and urinate before undergoing the delayed imaging procedure.

Dosage and Radiopharmaceutical
A physician might choose any drug from a wide variety of radiopharmaceuticals. For instance, the doctors might select diphosphonate drugs depending on the initial conditions after an oral assessment. An adult should receive an intravenous injection of 740 to 110 MBq or 20 to 30 mCi of the 99mTc –phosphates in addition to phosphonates (Donohoe et al., 2003). Otherwise, children should receive an intravenous injection of 9 to 11 MBq/kg or 0.20 to 0.30 mCi/kg of the tracer drug during the intervention.

Additionally, doctors administer more dosages of the radiopharmaceuticals to obese patients. More specifically, an obese patient should receive 11 to 13 MBq/kg, while patients suffering from pediatric disorders should receive 9 to 11 MBq/kg. Unfortunately, oxidation can reduce the effectiveness of bone scintigraphy. Therefore, a physician should remove trapped air in the vial used to administer the drugs.

Imaging
Firstly, the clinician acquires flow images after injecting a patient with a radioactive tracer compound. However, the gamma camera is set before the actual injection time and should take 30 shots with a matrix of 64 by 64 by 16. Secondly, the physician conducts blood pool imaging after 10 minutes of issuing drug the intravenously. The blood pool image should have a larger frame of 128 by 128 by 16.

Lastly, the doctors conduct delayed bone imaging, which should take 2 to 5 hours after the intravenous injection. The delayed skeletal imaging procedure involves continuous imaging of both the posterior and anterior view of the body using a high-resolution gamma camera or collimator.

Diagnosis of the Scan
The radioactive drugs' tracer element has higher concentration levels in areas with defects than the usual human skeleton location. Moreover, the tracers collect intensively on parts of the human skeleton undergoing continuous repair; thereby collimator reveals darker spots on the film produced. The darker areas also indicate other defects, such as the spread of cancer or a fracture in the skeleton. Always, even the distribution of the radioactive tracer on the skeleton indicates normal bone activity (Krans, 2018). A nuclear bone scan can reveal many diseases; therefore, precise interpretation requires a complement of a patient's medical history. Therefore, the darker spots or where the radioactive material is never collected are indicators of bone disorders.

Conclusion
Bone scintigraphy therapy requires a patient to refrain from taking bismuth-related drugs and not attending an x-ray with barium elements four days before the procedure. Another vital preparation for the intervention is to take eight glasses of water to hydrate body tissue and initiate urination before the imaging procedure. Hence, a nuclear bone scan is a relatively cheaper and safer procedure than standard x-ray therapy. X-rays are more expensive and less effective than nuclear bone scans, which reveal many defects in the skeleton.