Radiopharmaceuticals

Today there are an estimated ten million nuclear imaging procedures, performed each year, in just the United States, and the number is still growing. More than 30,000 therapy procedures are performed in the USA each year using radiopharmaceuticals. Moreover, while the numbers continue to grow, so also do the variety of the procedures being employed. A weakness of nuclear medicine is related also to one of its strengths. Unlike other types of imaging where only an instrument and the patient are required (e.g., with ultrasonics); nuclear medicine requires a radiopharmaceutical. At the same time, the variety of radiopharmaceuticals offers the ability to trace one or more particular functions of the human body. This provides nuclear medicine with great variety in detecting specific pathologies. Various nuclear medicine studies are possible because of the localization of radiopharmaceuticals in different organs