What are the benefits of nuclear medicine?
Nuclear Medicine enables doctors to produce a quick, accurate diagnosis of a wide range of conditions and diseases in a person of any age. This is because information gathered using a nuclear medicine technique is much more comprehensive than other imaging procedures since it describes organ function, not just structure. The result is that many diseases and cancers can be diagnosed much earlier. This allows the appropriate treatment to begin as early as possible, which means it has a far greater chance of being fully effective. In addition, the tests are painless and most scans expose patients to only minimal amounts of radiation. In fact, nuclear medicine procedures utilize only very small doses of short-lived isotopes (ones that only stay radioactive for a few hours or days), thus the amount of radiation received is generally less than or equal to that of an x-ray. Whole body and healthy tissue doses can be minimized while the radioisotope is targeted toward the affected tissue or or
