Hell J Nucl Med
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We aimed to investigate the correlations between the prostate specific membrane antigen (PSMA) expression parameters of the primary prostate tumor on gallium-68 (68Ga)-PSMA positron emission tomography/computed tomography (PET/CT) with metastatic patterns in patients with Gleason Score (GS) >7 prostate cancer (PCa). ⋯ The PSMA-TV and TL-PSMA values are strong markers for metastasis prediction in patients with GS >7 PCa but no other PSMA expression parameters can distinguish between N1M0 and M1 groups.
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The global COVID-19 health and economic crisis has forced people to adopt challenging rules of social distancing and self-isolation. Health care staff has been advised to change working routines to keep themselves and their patients safe. Radionuclide therapy has had an increasing role in clinical practice. ⋯ Treatment decisions for thyroid cancer and NETs are challenging in this environment. Any decision to postpone therapy must be carefully considered, balancing risks and benefits. A risk of worsened prognosis due to delayed or suboptimal cancer treatment must be weighed against the risk of severe COVID-19 illness.
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In December 2019 a new β-CoV, Severe Acute Respiratory Coronavirus- 2 (SARS-CoV-2), has been identified in Wuhan Hubei Province, China. Within a few months it spread rapidly to more than 114 countries and the disease, Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), was declared pandemic on 11th February 2020 by the World Health Organization (WHO). Until 20 June 2020 8:09 am, 8,465,085 cases of COVID-19 were confirmed globally, with 454,258 deaths. ⋯ At the time of writing USA and Brazil, are the countries with the highest disease burden. Governments have imposed a variety of suggestions and restrictions in order to control the spread of the virus, focusing mainly on social distancing, self-isolation, personal hygiene and personal protective equipment (PPE). Greece was one of the countries that implemented early drastic measures thus succeeding in controlling the virus transmission; having a profound economical effect though.
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On December 29, 2019, a hospital in the City of Wuhan, Hubei Province, in Central China, admitted four individuals with pneumonia. The hospital reported this occurrence to the local center for disease control (CDC), which lead Wuhan CDC staff to initiate a field investigation with a retrospective search for pneumonia patients. On December 31, 2019, the World Health Organization (WHO) was alerted by the Chinese authorities for several cases of pneumonia of unknown origin in the City of Wuhan. ⋯ So far, COVID-19 pandemic has affected the way people live and work globally, and has resulted in extreme strain on the healthcare systems worldwide. Most of the nuclear medicine studies are performed on an out-patient basis. Therefore, without effective implementation of the required preventive measures, there is a significant risk for viral transmission when visiting nuclear medicine departments, particularly in periods of high community spread.
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Nearly 19.9 million cases and more than 730 thousand disease-related deaths have been confirmed in the months that followed WHO's assessment that the novel coronavirus COVID-19, first emerged in Wuhan China on December 2019, could be characterized as a pandemic. The aforementioned coronavirus affected 188 countries as of 8.10.2020. Despite the continually increasing number of COVID-19 cases reported to CDC, at national level, the percentage of visits to outpatient providers and emergency departments has decreased and mortality rates attributed to COVID-19 have declined compared to the previous weeks, still above the baseline. ⋯ This way, health systems will be equipped with better and faster protocols and best practices in order to manage efficiently any other pandemic that might emerge in the future. In this context, Nuclear Medicine departments should reconsider and update their practices, by altering routines and workflows in order to comply with the new sanitary standards, triaging their appointments, or introducing new diagnostic methods like Tele-Medicine / Tele Nuclear Medicine and Artificial Intelligence applications. This special edition of Hellenic Journal of Nuclear Medicine has as its main purpose to introduce and communicate those new practices and protocols/standard operating procedures, in order for the scientific community, health public institutions, affected individuals and their families to be duly informed.