Implementation of nuclear technologies in medicine has become a separate branch called nuclear medicine. What are the main functioning principles and specific features of this sphere today?
Yu. Lishmanov: Nuclear medicine is a part of radiation medicine, radiodiagnostics and radiotherapeutics, connected with the usage of diagnostic and therapeutic radioisotopes. Short-living isotopes or radionuclides emitting gamma-rays are diagnostic ones. There are long-living isotopes. Isotopes, put in the organism, let us register emission from the place of their gathering and estimate the processes taking place.
N. Krivonogov: X-ray radiation is an external one in relation to an organism. In nuclear medicine rays are emitted from inside the organ, which has accumulated a certain irradiating radionuclide, an isotope. Then we register such radiation and obtain basis for precise diagnosis.
Can nuclear medicine be considered as a breakthrough in diagnostics?
Yu. Lishmanov: Nuclear medicine and x-ray radiation are the parts of radiodiagnosis, thanks to which 90% of correct diagnosis are made statistically. Radiopharmaceutical (pharmaceutical, marked with radionuclide) is put in the organism. Thus the isotope connected to pharmaceutical is cumulated in heart and allows determining its condition.
N. Krivonogov: Radiopharmaceutical is cumulated selectively by different organs or organ systems.
Yu. Lishmanov: About 80% of patients with malignant tumors are successfully treated with the help of beta-ray therapy use which also includes radionuclide therapy with radioactive sources application.
N.Krivonogov: Nuclear medicine uniqueness is in running diagnostics of organ or organ system at the early stage of desease, detect defects at molecular and cellular levels when the other diagnostics methods define the organ condition as normal. In this situation rentgenologic and magnetic resonance imaging procedures does not allow making correct diagnosis.
What contribution can be made by the nuclear medicine to treatment modalities and therapy?
Yu. Lishmanov: Curative and therapeutic nuclear medicine is connected with radioactive isotopes usage for medicinal purposes. Non-penetrating beta-emitters and gamma-emitters (for instance Strontium 89) are applied. They are accumulated in bones and attacks malignant cells if there are metastasize, giving minimal irradiation to the organism on the whole.
How does radiation medicine develop globally today and what are the obstacles for its development in Russia?
Yu. Lishmanov: World radiopharmaceutical market grows by 10−15% annually. More than 50% of world’s radio nuclides yearly output are spent for nuclear medicine needs. More than 13 million of people in the USA are medically examined using nuclear medicine methods.
There are problems connected with radio nuclides production in Russia due to different reasons. There is no production of technetium generator, which is one of the main isotopes included in many pharmaceuticals. There are also such radiopharmaceuticals which are neither imported nor produced in Russia, and those reactors, which produced them previously, are either under maintenance or closed up. Radioactive molybdenum, raw material for technetium production, price has surged dramatically. However, technology of the most actual radionuclide production has been already assimilated. Tomsk Institute of Nuclear Physics developed its ecologically harmless technology of technetium production through reactor irradiation without the use of radioactive molybdenum.
N. Krivonogov: Tomsk is a unique city. Besides technetium producing reactor, cyclotron is utilized for making radiopharmaceuticals applied in diagnostics, such as iodine-123 widely used in radionuclide diagnostics.
Describe the future of nuclear medicine. What prospective lines of nuclear medicine development can you single out?
N. Krivonogov: Radiology will become one of Tomsk atomic cluster priorities. It is connected with three directions, first of which is the development of ultra short-living radiopharmaceuticals. The second one is foundation of Tomsk nuclear medicine center with equipment enabling registrating positron emitting radiopharmaceuticals. There are about 600−800 such centers in Europe and America in total and two canters are in the Russian Federation – in Saint-Petersburg and Moscow.
Yu. Lishmanov: 3 centers will be built during the next 5 years in Dimitrovgrad, Obninsk and Tomsk.
N. Krivonogov: The third direction, which should be developed, is nuclear therapy, radioiodinetherapy, for instance. It will give an opportunity to treat thyroidea malignant tumors. But it requires establishing of dispensary service.
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