As hospital nuclear medicine departments were established in the 1960s and 1970s, each department developed detailed policies and procedures to meet the specialized and specific handling requirements of radiopharmaceuticals. In many health systems, radiopharmaceuticals are still unique as the only drugs not under the control of the health system pharmacy; however, the clear trend--and now an ac...

In recent years, there has been a proliferation in the development of targeted radionuclide cancer therapy. It is now possible to use baseline clinical and imaging assessments to determine the most effective therapy and to tailor this therapy during the course of treatment based on radiation dosimetry and tumor response. Although this personalized approach to medicine has the advantage of maxim...

CONTEXT Inherited and sporadic medullary thyroid cancer (MTC) is an uncommon and medically challenging malignancy. Even if the extent of initial surgery is deemed adequate, the recurrence rate remains high, up to 50% in most series. Measurement of serum calcitonin is important in the follow-up of patients with MTC, and reliably reflects the existence of the disease. EVIDENCE ACQUISITION There...

The interest around small-animal cardiac radionuclide imaging is growing as rodent models can be manipulated to allow the simulation of human diseases. In addition to new radiopharmaceuticals testing, often researchers apply well-established probes to animal models, to follow the evolution of the target disease. This reverse translation of standard radiopharmaceuticals to rodent models is compl...

Bone pain from metastatic disease is most common in cancers of the breast, prostate, and lung. Despite the World Health organization algorithm for treating such pain, the outcomes are not often satisfactory. In 2005, there will be 3 radiopharmaceuticals available in the United States that can reduce or relieve bone pain caused by osteoblastic metastases with apparently equal efficacy. Phosphoru...

The fraction of injected activity that was excreted through the breast milk of nursing mothers at different times after the injection of various radiopharmaceuticals has been measured in 21 patients. For 99mTc-labeled radiopharmaceuticals the total excreted fraction was 10% for pertechnetate and 1.5-3% for MAA, plasmin, diethylenetriaminepentaacetic acid (DTPA), and methylene diphosphonate (MDP...

Microglia, as cellular mediators of neuroinflammation, are implicated in the pathogenesis of a wide range of neurodegenerative diseases. Positron emission tomography (PET) imaging of microglia has matured over the last 20 years, through the development of radiopharmaceuticals targeting several molecular biomarkers of microglial activation and, among these, mainly the translocator protein-18 kDa...

Technetium-99m radiopharmaceuticals play an important role in wide range of applications in nuclear medicine. Bone imaging agents are among the fi rst developed 99mTc-radiopharmaceuticals and the most widely used radiopharmaceuticals in diagnostic nuclear medicine [1]. Bisphosphonates (BPs) are synthetic organic compounds characterized by a P-C-P backbone structure. They are chemically stable a...

The drug thalidomide was contained in the blockbuster Contergan, which has been used as a non- prescription sedative drug and a potent treatment for occurring morning sickness in pregnant women during the 1950s and the early 1960s. This therapeutic use has led to one of the most prominent disasters in the history of drug development due to peripheral neuritis and malformations, e.g. phocomelia,...

Radiopharmaceuticals are occasionally administered to pregnant patients either out of clinical necessity or by accident. In recognition of the latter, the Society of Nuclear Medicine recommends pregnancy testing before any procedure that will expose the fetus to >50 mGy. When pregnancy is known, the dose of radionuclide to be employed is kept as low as possible without sacrificing radiographic ...