Current situation of the facilities, equipments and human resources in nuclear medicine in Argentina

The current situation of nuclear medicine in Argentina, taking into account the facilities, their equipment and human resources available is presented in this paper. A review and analysis of the equipment, including technical characteristics and a survey of the professionals and technicians of the area, was carried out. In Argentina, there are 266 centers of nuclear medicine distributed all over the country. The operating licenses are granted by the Nuclear Regulatory Authority (Autoridad Regulatoria Nuclear - ARN). Forty four percent of the installed equipment are SPECT of 1 or 2 heads and 39,4 % are gamma camera. Besides, there are eleven PET operating in Argentina. There are 416 nuclear medicine physicians with individual permit for diagnostic purposes and 50% of them has also individual permit for treatment purposes. With the purpose of analyzing the regional distribution of the available resources in nuclear medicine, the country was divided into 7 geographical regions: City of Buenos Aires, Province of Buenos Aires, Pampa, Cuyo, Northeast, Northwest and Patagonia. From the analysis of the gathered information it is possible to conclude that the nuclear medicine equipment as well as the personnel present an irregular distribution, with a major concentration in the City of Buenos Aires and Province of Buenos Aires. The Northeast region presents the lowest number of Nuclear Medicine centers and the Patagonia region has the lowest number of medicine nuclear physicians with individual permits. The number of SPECT and gamma cameras is 7,3 per million of inhabitants. The information about the available resources in nuclear medicine presented in this paper and its comparison with the international information available provide elements for a better planning of the future activities in the area not only for the operators but also from the regulatory point of view. (author)