Registering the procedure of scintigraphy research of animals in nuclear medicine

A rapid development of veterinary nuclear medicine has taken place in the last decades. It is mostly widespread in the USA and also develops dynamically in western countries, especially in Germany; in central Europe, according to the authors’ knowledge, Budapest is the only significant scientific centre, in Poland such investigations are being developed in Gdańsk.
Veterinary radioisotope investigations are carried out in the majority of veterinary patients. The indications approximate to those in humans; the investigations of the bone are the most important groups of investigations, mainly with horses, hyperthyroidism with cats, hypothyreosis with dogs, veterinary oncology. In the Polish environment of nuclear medicine, the veterinary nuclear medicine is still way-out.
This work introduces the procedure of registration of investigations in the animals’ scintigraphy in nuclear medicine. The analysis of legal acts concerning radiological protection and the sanitary-epidemiological aspects allowed to obtain permissions in the institutions of nuclear medicine in the veterinary patient’s matter.
The Department of Nuclear Medicine of the Medical University in Gdańsk received permissions from the proper organs: The National Atomic Energy Agency and The Sanitary Inspector of the Regional Sanitary-Epidemiological Station to carry out the investigations of the animals’ scintigraphy.
Another part of the work shows the techniques of nuclear medicine in Veterinary Scintigraphy Service of the Autonomous University in Barcelona (Spain), which specialises in horses’ scintigraphy investigations.
Veterinary radioisotope investigations are an interesting topic and no matter how exotic it would sound now, they make up a challenge and a chance for the whole community of nuclear medicine.