Introduction

In general healthcare, the speciality of nuclear medicine has contributed noteworthy diagnostic advances in such areas as positron emission tomography (PET), single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT), and lymphoscintigraphy/sential node biopsy.  However, nuclear medicine studies are often poorly understood and relatively underutilized in oral healthcare.  The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of modern nuclear medicine, and by sampling the literature, exemplify its application in the diagnosis and treatment or oral and maxillofacial diseases.

Areas where a dental care provider may utilize diagnostic isotopes include head and neck tumors, salivary gland disease, and various metabolic and infectious processes of the head and neck region.  Computed tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) with, and without, contrast enhancement can provide high quality static images of the soft and hard tissue under study.  However, these imaging modalities provide little physiologic information about a disease process.  On the other hand, nuclear medicine scans have the ability to dynamically detect abnormalities at an earlier stage, well before morphological changes are evident.¹

The intent of this review is to familiarize dental healthcare providers with several nuclear medicine studies that can be used as diagnostic modalities in the disease of the head and neck.

The principle of nuclear medicine is intuitively simple.  A radioisotope is injected into a patient.  At some later predetermined time, a specialized camera is used to detect and image the quantity and distribution of radioactivity.²

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Citation Number: Vol. 5, No. 1, Page 095