Hell J Nucl Med
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The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) global pandemic poses a significant challenge to the national health systems. Not only China, the first country that experienced the health crisis since last December, but the rest of the world, is facing an unprecedented global health crisis, the most serious crisis in a century, with social and economic impact. However, the most important impact of the new pandemic is the human impact. ⋯ There are several issued guidance from national and international organizations, trying to help to cope with suspected or verified COVID-19 patients. Patients with cancer are thought to be more susceptible and have higher morbidity and mortality rates from COVID-19 than the general population. In the current article, our aim is to present measures, guidance and thoughts that should be considered for the cancer patients.
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The Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic is the biggest shock in decades to the well developed healthcare system and resources worldwide. Although there was a wide variation in the level of preparedness, the transition was tough even for the most renowned healthcare systems. Increasing the capacity and adapting healthcare for the needs of COVID-19 patients is described by the WHO as a fundamental outbreak response measure. ⋯ Recently the ASNC, SNMMI, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the Infectious Disease Society of America (IDSA), issued an information statement which describes a careful approach to reestablishment of non-emergent care in nuclear cardiology laboratories reflecting diverse settings from the United States and worldwide. In the same spirit it is also the reintroduction guidance issued by North American Cardiovascular Societies. In this paper we provide a synopsis of the basic steps of adapting nuclear cardiology practice in the era of COVID-19 in order to balance between the risk of viral transmission while also providing crucial cardiovascular assessments for our patients.
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The novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has changed people's normal lives in a very short time causing extensive infections and mortality, which required the national health systems to be adapted to new situation. Changes in healthcare services included modifications of standard procedures in nuclear medicine departments in order to limit COVID-19 spreading and protect patients and personnel. Here, we recommend management of patients with neurological diseases and especially dementia and movement disorders, who are referred for neuroimaging with nuclear medicine techniques.
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Nuclear medicine procedures are widely used as "in vivo" biomarkers in a large number of brain diseases, especially in the diagnosis of Parkinson's disease (PD) and of parkinsonian disorders (pD). Furthermore, nuclear medicine is used in the differential diagnosis of dementias especially Alzheimer's disease (AD) and dementia with Lewy's bodies (LBD) which share many clinical symptoms and often LBD is misdiagnosed as AD. The differential diagnosis between these clinical entities is crucial for treatment since LBD also shares some clinical symptoms with parkinsonian disorders. We reviewed the most relevant papers that study the usefulness of both iodine-123-ioflupane studied by single photon emission tomography (123I-ioflupane SPET) and of 123I-metaiodobenzylguanidine (123I-MIBG) cardiac scintigraphy in the diagnosis of PD and pD and in the differential diagnosis between AD and LBD in order to contribute to the clinical practice of the diseases.
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Sarcoidosis is a multisystem granulomatous disease of unknown etiology. The diagnosis is based on clinical and radiographic findings as well as by histopathological findings. ⋯ Positron emission tomography with fluorine-18-fluorodeoxyglucose ((18)F-FDG) has shown effectiveness in detecting occult disease and assessing disease activity during treatment. This review article provides an overview of the applications of PET/computed tomography and PET/ magnetic resonance imaging for evaluation of patients with sarcoidosis.