Organ Transplants

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Nuclear Medicine Used for Organ Transplant

Nuclear Medicine has been used for many years to help physicians diagnose patients with numerous illnesses. Some of these diseases, such as cancer, metastatic bone disease, Alzheimer’s, and coronary artery disease are just a few things that nuclear medicine help detect and also help physicians in choosing the right treatment plan for a patient. Another main detection in nuclear medicine is to help diagnose, Organ Transplant Rejection. Organ transplants are very common in hospitals today, thanks to nuclear medicine in detecting to see if organs are or not cooperating well within the body. A patient who is experiencing organ rejection in the lungs are advised to contact their physicians immediately. These symptoms are usually a high fever, flu like sickness, cough,
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If the physician is suspecting an organ rejection of the lungs, from a previous organ transplant, the physician will contact nuclear medicine to do a VQ scan, which stands for Ventilation-Perfusion Scan. This scan uses radioactive material to examine airflow and blood flow in the lungs. The drugs used for this scan are radiopharmaceuticals that are usually inhaled as a gas. Once the radioactive drug is digested, the patient will lay on an examination table, where above the table will be a camera, called a gamma camera and a single-photon emission-computed tomography (SPECT). These two devices will detect the radioactive wavelengths within the lungs, to see perfusion and the ventilation of the lungs. These radioactive drugs that are taken by the patient, will make the gamma camera see the inside of the body, which is then imaged into a computer for further reviewing. This camera may rotate around you while you are laying still and take multiple pictures, or it can take single shot pictures, while a technician may have you change positions in between shots, like an X-Ray.