Many things come to mind when you hear the word “nuclear”; like destructive, dangerous, and/or powerful. Yet it’s probably uncommon for people to link the word ‘nuclear’ with ‘medicine’. In my essay i will talk about how nuclear medicine works, the benefits vs. risks, and some of the common uses. First off I’ll say that nuclear medicine is defined as the branch of medicine that deals with radioactive substances in research, diagnosis, and treatment.
Nuclear medicine is actually a really simple procedure that produces produces pictures by scanning. This scan is used to find abnormalities in the body like neurological diseases, types of cancers, and heart disease. This happens by taking a small amount of radioactive material as either an injection or a pill. The radioactive material will be absorbed by organs or tissue that will then produce emissions that a specific type of scanner will be able to detected. Although the time of when you will be scanned will vary according to the type of scan you need sometimes it may
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Well actually there aren’t many risks with nuclear medicine. For example, someone may have an allergic reaction to the radiopharmaceuticals. But this is an extremely rare case which is usually mild anyway. The injection may give you slight pain and some redness but that’s basically like every other shot you’ve received before. But a major thing is that if a woman is pregnant or breastfeeding they need to tell that doctor. Other than that the benefits greatly outweigh the risks. The benefits of this procedure include providing unique information that couldn’t have been found otherwise, it’s less expensive than exploratory surgery and may also gives more precise information than the surgery may. Another one of it’s better perks is that it has the potential to identify disease in its earliest stage - before symptoms arise or other abnormalities can be detected by other