Northern Cochise Community Hospital’s nuclear medicine department will go live on Saturday.
Nuclear medicine is a sub-specialty within the field of radiology, certified nuclear medicine technologist Margaret Balobeck said.
Nuclear medicine uses very small amounts of radioactive substances (tracers) given to the patient, usually by an injection into a vein,” Balobeck explained. “Once these tracers are inside the body, they produce emissions.
“A special type of camera, called a scintillation or gamma camera, is used to transform those emissions into images,” she said.
These images “not only provide information about the anatomy of the body part being tested, but also provide information about how well that body part is working,” she said.
Some types of testing to be done include:
• Bone scans to evaluate lesions and infections.
• Heart scans and cardiac stress tests to identify abnormal blood flow to the heart muscle.
• Thyroid scans, which can measure how well the thyroid is functioning and can actually identify if a lump on the thyroid is cancer or benign.
• Lung scans, which can evaluate the blood and airflow to the lungs and can identify the presence of blood clots.
The Herald