Nuclear medicine's role in infection and inflammation

Nuclear medicine imaging techniques can help In patient evaluation where in fectious and non-infectious inflammatory disorders are suspected. When sele cted and tailored to the clinical situation, most techniques already in use or available soon provide information with high sensitivity. However, almo st ail currently available techniques lack the specificity to discriminate between infectious and non infectious inflammation. In undiagnosed fever, t his nonspecificity may be an advantage since fever of unknown origin is cau sed by infection in only about 25% of cases, but in the postoperative patie nt the reliable differentiation between infection and sterile inflammation is highly relevant to clinical management. The range of radiopharmceuticals to investigate infectious and non-microbial inflammatory disorders is expa nding and developments in protein/peptide chemistry and in labelling techno logy should lead to agents with very high specific activities. Nuclear medi cine has to add specificity to Its already high sensitivity if it Is to dis tinguish both categories of inflammatory disorder.