Show Peaceful Uses Of Atomic Energy The nationwide energy crisis has focused more attention on the peaceful uses or nuclear power at least as far as providing electricity for BUT A lesser-known use for nuclear energy is quietly and It Is proving to be a viable alternative to the diagnosis and treatment of a wide range of heart diseases and overactive thyroid The field is known as nuclear At the University of this new medical specialty has been given divisional status and is actively involved in patient research and HAROLD J. DeBlanc formerly of Johns Hopkins University School of now heads the He said procedures in nuclear medicine differ from conventional radiological procedures because they do not utilize an external power source to penetrate the body's tissues and take a picture such as an INSTEAD doctors use radioisotopes and that are injected into a patient's special instruments are used to a particular portion of the body and produce a picture from the harmless amounts of radioactivity that are can direct the radioisotope or to almost any area of the body by combining it with different chemical said THE properties of the various agents cause the injected substance to be received by the target organ and passed on by In this nuclear medicine specialists can scan the liver or skeletal structure to pinpoint tumor activity or other medical DEBLANC says the radioactivity level of the various is extremely low and usually lasts only long enough for the The resultant radiation doses to the patient are minimal and roughly equivalent to a simple In addition to the scans can pinpoint sites of and of the pulmonary embolism In the a wide spectrum of thyroid and liver and bone ARE also strides in diagnostic work with heart the division chief is now possible to take a picture of the dead or dying heart muscle after a heart attack to more clearly determine its size and can also get images of heart wall motion how the heart contracts after a heart attack to see if there are any abnormal bulges in the wall that might require lifesaving surgical DeBlanc THESE tests can be accomplished by the simple intravenous injection of the proper Alternative procedures often require insertion of a tube into the heart or great and this is considerably more com He indicated that a number of other radioactive agents have been developed to localize in soft tissue tumors and that aren't located within any particular are used in diagnosing whether a patient has such tumors or he it Is difficult to clinically locate those soft tissue tumors or because they may be found deep within the While diagnosis is the division's main patient care therapeutic use of radioactive substances is also of our work in this area is with hyperthyroid patients and patients with thyroid DeBlanc Hyperthyroidism involves a thyroid gland that is overproducing thyroid resulting in extreme high blood pres rapid pulse protruding eye The disease is caused by the thyroid trapping more iodine from the blood and producing more hormone than is needed maintaining normal body BY USING a specific radioisotope doctors can cause the gland to absorb a predicted amount of the radioactive quietly and painlessly destroys a portion of the thyroid tissue and lowers the gland's ability to synthesize thyroid In the the tissue was removed or prolonged medical therapy with large amounts of drugs was DeBlanc by using nuclear medicine the disease can often be cured by one oral dose of and surgery or prolonged medical therapy can be |