Nuclear Medicine Treatment

In therapy, doctors give you a radioactive drug that homes in on your cancer and bombards it with radiation, causing it to stop growing or die. Doctors use this type of therapy, called targeted radiation or brachytherapy, to treat many cancers and some heart, gastrointestinal, endocrine and neurological conditions.

For Nuclear Medicine Treatment procedures, a small amount of radioactive material is combined with a carrier molecule and then given to you through an IV (intravenous). You may also swallow or inhale the tracer as a gas. The tracer travels through your body and accumulates in areas of high chemical or metabolic activity, called hot spots. Imaging devices, such as gamma cameras, computed tomography (CT) scanners or positron emission tomography (PET) scanners, detect the tracer and create pictures of your body.

Inside the Nuclear Medicine Department: What Patients Can Expect

The radiation dose from a nuclear medicine scan varies and is typically less than or equal to the daily environmental background radiation you receive from the environment and food. It also is less than or comparable to the radiation exposure from a CT scan or X-ray exam.

In addition to standard chemotherapy and surgery, doctors use nuclear medicine therapy to treat some neuroendocrine tumors (NETs), including rare pancreatic NETs with metastases that are hard to surgically remove. The most common form of NET PRRT is lutetium Lu 177 dotatate (Lutathera).