[en] Regional lymph nodes surgical management is an integral part of breast cancer therapy. One of the most important therapeutic problems is the risk of surgical treatment which is too wide or inadequate due to the lack of correct presurgical information on the conditions of regional lymph nodes. For melanoma the problem was solved combining surgical accuracy with the slightest surgical resection, using sentinel node biopsy. In breast cancer the removal of axillary nodes proved to be unnecessary in more than 50% of cases. The first international studies on the use of sentinel node biopsy in breast carcinoma for the identification of patients who do not need axillary clearance suggest the high accuracy of the technique. Some practical problems still exist, however, and the optimisation of the method is not yet complete. The use of sentinel node biopsy in breast cancer treatment might be able to provide distinctive clinical information, which can improve our knowledge about the disease's biological behaviour and about its treatment. (author)

[en] Bleomycin and mannitol seem to localize particularly in animal neoplastic tissue. Analyzing the structure of the two molecules, the presence of sites combining /sup 99m/Tc can be hypothesized, particularly for bleomycin. Many methods for labelling bleomycin with /sup 99m/Tc have been reported, but these radiopharmaceuticals have not often been used clinically. The aims of this study were: (1) to compare a method based on the utilization of a solid reductant (SnO) with a more often used method involving the utilization of Sn Cl/sub 2/ as a reductant; (2) to propose two reliable labelling methods which prove easy to perform in any laboratory

No abstract available

[en] Functional breast imaging using ^99mTc MIBI is showing that this technique is able to detect cancer with more than 90% specificity. Using a dedicated gamma camera, with the breast under compression, i.e. in similar conditions of mammography, the detection of sub-centimeter cancers can be improved. A number of factors affects the detection of small cancers as: thickness of the breast, distance between tumor and collimator, cardiac activity. Radioactivity emitted from the body can obscure the breast activity mainly due to the large difference on radioactivity concentration. In this work we analyze the intensity and the energy distribution of Compton scattering coming from the breast by a Germanium detector and by a dedicated imager with a small FOV placed in a geometrical condition similar to mammography. In vivo measurements were performed in patients with a breast cancer ranging between 8 mm and 15 mm. Intensity of Compton scattering from 4 to 10 times greater than full energy peak events resulted. Measurements were compared with ones obtained by a phantom simulating the breast without chest activity demonstrating how large is the Compton contribution from the chest

[en] Up today Hamamatsu R3292 is the Position Sensitive Photo Multiplier Tube (PSPMT) with the largest sensitive area (10 cm of diameter). At the same time it has the minimum size for clinical application in Nuclear Medicine. A portable gamma camera was realized, based on 5 inches PSPMT coupled to a scintillating array. The head has a light weight (15 Kg.) spatial resolution resulted better than that of Anger Camera with good linearity response, good energy resolution and FOV coincident with intrinsic one of PSPMT. To optimize gamma camera response two different scintillating arrays were tested: YAP:Ce and CsI (Tl). Their overall size cover all photochatode active area, and crystal pixel size was 2 mm x 2 mm. The detection efficiency resulted comparable to that of Anger Camera. The best result was obtained by CsI (Tl) scintillating: an intrinsic spatial resolution of 1.6 mm FWHM and a relative energy resolution of 17% FWHM. With a standard general purpose collimator a spatial resolution of about 2 mm resulted. Some preliminary results were also obtained in breast scintigraphy

[en] Sucralfate is a basic aluminum salt of sucrose octasulfate that protects the damaged mucosa and also the normal mucosa from peptic aggression. In fact sucralfate adheres to the mucosa as pH decreases below 4, and buffers the acid, slowly releasing sucrose octasulfate that forms insoluble complexes with the proteins exuded by the ulcers, or is washed out of the stomach. Sucralfate itself is also able to precipitate with proteins in the ulcers. Sucralfate may be labelled by several methods: /sup 99m/Tc HSA, /sup 99m/Tc DTPA, /sup 75/Se, /sup 111/In. The aims of this study were to evaluate the clinical results obtained using /sup 99m/Tc DTPA sucralfate, which the authors believe is the only labelled sucralfate suitable for clinical studies and to discuss the possible diagnostic uses of /sup 99m/Tc sucrose octasulfate. In fact, it has been possible to label the sucrose octasulfate either with /sup 99m/Tc DTPA or with /sup 99m/Tc without the use of intermediate ligands

[en] It has been argued that the appearance of a lag phase in Tc-99m (140 keV) anterior gastric emptying (GE) studies may be artifactual. Since gastric emptying with In-111 (247 keV) is less dependent on attenuation, we have developed a new In-111 meal. Two eggs are mixed with In-111 oxine, cooked thoroughly, and eaten between two pieces of toast. In vitro stability was studied by incubating the In-111 egg in human gastric juice at 37⁰C for 3 hours (97.0% +- 0.6% was bound). In five normal volunteers the mean t1/2 for gastric emptying was 87 +- 12 minutes. This was not significantly different from the Tc-99m normal value (77 +- 10 minutes) we have measured. A lag phase for the In-111-containing egg was present in each case (mean, 40 +- 8 minutes). The authors conclude that an In-111 meal can confirm the presence of a physiologic lag phase

[en] Quantitative cholescintigraphy has been proposed as a noninvasive method to assess function of the sphincter of Oddi in cholecystectomized subjects. The present study evaluated several quantitative cholescintigraphic variables to assess their time-related variability as well as their capability to detect delay of choledochoduodenal bile flow. Cholescintigraphy with 2,6-diethylphenylcarbahoylmethyl diacetic acid 99mTc was performed in 24 cholecystectomized patients with recurrent biliary-like pain, laboratory evidence of bile stasis, normal hepatocellular function tests, and no evidence of choledocholithiasis. The study was also performed in 26 asymptomatic cholecystectomized subjects and repeated at 2-week intervals during identical experimental conditions in 10 of them. Of the following quantitative cholescintigraphic variables investigated, (a) hepatic T peak, (b) 50% hepatic retention (T peak, 1/2), (c) percent hepatic retention at 30 minutes, (d) percent hepatic retention at 40 minutes, (e) vein-hepatic hilum transit time, (f) vein-duodenum transit time, and (g) hepatic hilum-duodenum transit time, only the hepatic hilum-duodenum transit time showed a statistically significant correlation between the duplicate studies. Only vein-duodenum transit time and hepatic hilum-duodenum transit time discriminated the symptomatic from the asymptomatic patients; of the two variables, however, hepatic hilum-duodenum transit time showed less intrasubject variability and no overlap between the two groups of patients. Hepatic hilum-duodenum transit time showed a positive linear correlation with the maximum diameter of the choledochus. It is concluded that in cholecystectomized patients, the hepatic hilum-duodenum transit time appears to detect a delay of bile flow into the intestine better than any other cholescintigraphic variable

No abstract available

No abstract available