What will I experience during and after the procedure?
Mostly, the nuclear medicine procedures are painless and rarely causing significant discomfort or side effects except for intravenous injections where a pin prick may cause a slight pain when the needle is inserted into the vein. A cold sensation may felt when the radioactive material is injected into the arm but there are no other side effects. Other than injections, the procedure can be carried out by swallowing the radiotracer. The radiotracer has little or no taste.
In some procedures, a catheter may be placed into bladder that may cause temporary discomfort. It is essential to remain still while the images are being recorded so, it may cause some discomfort to remain still during imaging. A claustrophobic person may feel some anxiety while being scanned. Normal activities may be resumed after nuclear medicine scan unless the physician tells the otherwise. The small amount of radiotracer in body will lose its radioactivity over time and decays. The radiotracer can also pass out from the body through urine …show more content…
PET is a technique which is suitable to be used in oncology diagnosis of tumor or cancer. In oncology, fluorin-18 fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG) which is called FDG-PET is used as the tracer because it is a glucose analog that will be taken up by glucose-using cells and phosphorylated by hexokinase. This FDG-PET will be taken by tumor cells because they contain large amount of glucose. Most of the tissues cannot remove the phosphate that had been added by hexokinase, so, the FDG is trapped in cell that takes it up. Since it is a phosphorylated sugar and due to the ionic charge, it cannot exit from the cell unless it decays. So, the radiolabeling of tissues with high glucose uptake is enabled with the using of FDG-PET. Some other examples of glucose-using cells are brain and liver. Usually, the effective radiation dose is
Mostly, the nuclear medicine procedures are painless and rarely causing significant discomfort or side effects except for intravenous injections where a pin prick may cause a slight pain when the needle is inserted into the vein. A cold sensation may felt when the radioactive material is injected into the arm but there are no other side effects. Other than injections, the procedure can be carried out by swallowing the radiotracer. The radiotracer has little or no taste.
In some procedures, a catheter may be placed into bladder that may cause temporary discomfort. It is essential to remain still while the images are being recorded so, it may cause some discomfort to remain still during imaging. A claustrophobic person may feel some anxiety while being scanned. Normal activities may be resumed after nuclear medicine scan unless the physician tells the otherwise. The small amount of radiotracer in body will lose its radioactivity over time and decays. The radiotracer can also pass out from the body through urine …show more content…
PET is a technique which is suitable to be used in oncology diagnosis of tumor or cancer. In oncology, fluorin-18 fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG) which is called FDG-PET is used as the tracer because it is a glucose analog that will be taken up by glucose-using cells and phosphorylated by hexokinase. This FDG-PET will be taken by tumor cells because they contain large amount of glucose. Most of the tissues cannot remove the phosphate that had been added by hexokinase, so, the FDG is trapped in cell that takes it up. Since it is a phosphorylated sugar and due to the ionic charge, it cannot exit from the cell unless it decays. So, the radiolabeling of tissues with high glucose uptake is enabled with the using of FDG-PET. Some other examples of glucose-using cells are brain and liver. Usually, the effective radiation dose is