Nuclear Medicine Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Nuclear Medicine - Essay Example Preparation of patient mostly is dependent on the type of procedure that will be performed. Allergy must be checked for radioactive tracer material used. Some of the procedures such as a bone scan do not need intensive patient preparation, but some require. A good example is thyroid body scan. When a patient is being prepared for thyroid test he or she should be instructed to speak with the technologist directly before the procedure is undertaken. The patient should be instructed to stop all thyroid medication since they may be falsely detected as a pathology with the machine. Before stopping the medication, they should seek clarification from the doctor. The patients sometimes are instructed to fast for two hours for the effectiveness of the nuclear medicine procedure (Chia-Ho, 2014). Nuclear medicine has many advantages. One is the advantage painless and less not invasive. It can help to diagnose, treat even predict the outcome of a wide range of condition without causing a lot of trauma to the patient. It helps to detect pathology within the body at the early time that in turn can help control the condition ahead of time. Nuclear medicine can also help to check how well the cancers are responding to therapy. Nuclear medicines also have a share of disadvantages and limitation. It involves exposure to ionizing radiation that can cause mutation if they are in huge doses. Some of the radioactive tracer materials injected into bodies have an allergic reaction that can be very detrimental. Hence, it is necessary to test for the presence of allergy with radioactive tracer material before nuclear medicine procedure is commenced. A time sedation may be needed because nuclear medicine procedure a time make patient feels claustrophobic (Mititelu, 2014) Most of the ailments that are diagnosed and treated with nuclear medicine are internal. This ailment will otherwise require a surgical procedure to be done for the diagnosis or therapeutic procedure to be done.