Nuclear medicine specialists use safe, painless, and cost-effective techniques to take images of the body and treat disease. Nuclear medicine imaging is unique, because it provides doctors with information about both structure and function. It is a way to gather medical information that would otherwise be unavailable, require surgery, or necessitate more expensive diagnostic tests. Nuclear medicine imaging procedures often identify abnormalities very early in the progress of a disease—long before many medical problems are apparent with other diagnostic tests.

Nuclear medicine uses very small amounts of radioactive materials (radiopharmaceuticals) to diagnose and treat disease. In imaging, the radiopharmaceuticals are detected by special types of cameras that work with computers to provide very precise pictures about the area of the body being imaged. In treatment, the radiopharmaceuticals go directly to the organ being treated. The amount of radiation in a typical nuclear imaging procedure is comparable with that received during a diagnostic x-ray, and the amount received in a typical treatment procedure is kept within safe limits.

Staff:
A radiologist and a nuclear medicine specialist work in the nuclear medicine department with 3 well trained technicians and an administrative assistant.

Services
The department is providing diagnostic and therapeutic services for both inpatients and outpatients as follows:

• Nuclear Endocrinology

• Nuclear Nephrology & Urology

• Nuclear Gastroenterology

• CEA, MIBG, MIBI, MUGA & Octreo Scan

• Hepatobiliary Scan

• Radionuclide Therapy

Approximately three thousand nuclear medicine scans are performed every year for KHCC patients. The high quality of these scans enables oncologists to stage patients accurately, evaluate response and deliver high doses of targeted treatment in some types of cancer (e.g. thyroid papillary carcinoma treated with radioactive iodine).

Positron Emission Tomography (PET/CT) Scanner
Positron emission tomography (PET) is a noninvasive imaging technique that creates three-dimensional images of the heart, brain and other organs of the body. PET scans are mostly used in the diagnosis of cancer, especially lung cancer, colon cancer, head and neck cancers and lymphoma. However, it can also be used for heart disease, dementia and seizures. It is currently the most effective way to check for cancer recurrences and it offers significant advantages over other forms of imaging such as CT or MRI scans in detecting disease in many patients.

PET is "metabolic imaging" -- it detects changes in cells as they use energy to grow. It is good at identifying rapidly growing cells, such as cancer cells. PET scans can show cancers before anatomical changes are visible and can distinguish scar tissue from active tumors. As a diagnostic tool, PET can be used as an alternative to biopsy.
The PET scanner is a technology that allows physicians to examine the heart, brain, liver, tumors and muscle tissue in ways never before possible. It combines the fields of medicine, computer science, chemistry, physics and physiology to study the metabolic function of these body organs. By studying metabolic changes within the body, this technology can detect diseases weeks or months. Besides, PET is considered particularly effective in identifying whether cancer is present or not, if it has spread, if it is responding to treatment, and if a person is cancer free after treatment. Cancers for which PET is considered particularly effective include lung, head and neck, colorectal, esophageal, lymphoma, melanoma, breast, thyroid, cervical, pancreatic, and brain as well as other less-frequently occurring cancers.

Radiopharmaceutical substance FDG 18 (fluorodeoxy glucose), which includes both sugar (glucose) and a radionuclide (a radioactive element) that gives off signals, is injected into the patient. Its emissions are measured by a PET scanner.