Nuclear Medicine
Nuclear medicine is the use of radioactive materials for the diagnosis and treatment of a wide variety of diseases and disorders. Highly skilled professionals use special equipment and procedures along with small amounts of radioactive material to examine organ function to search for and diagnose diseases or results of injury. Patients having studies done in nuclear medicine are given small amounts of radioactive material, usually intravenously, but it may be taken orally or inhaled. This material travels through the body to the organ or body part to be imaged. The imaging can take place immediately or up to several days after the dosing, depending upon the study requested. Special equipment, like Geiger counters, detect the radioactive material in the patient. This detected material creates an image, which is interpreted by the nuclear medicine physician and reports back to the referring physician. The images are archived and sent to the picture archiving and communication system (PACS), making them available to all PACS users.
Nuclear medicine provides all the routine outpatient and inpatient procedures that are currently being performed in the field. Nuclear medicine at UPMC Hamot is open Monday through Friday, 7 a.m. to 4 p.m., with a technologist on call all other times for STAT procedures.
To schedule a nuclear medicine procedure or if you have any questions, please call Nuclear Medicine at 814-877-6184 between the hours of 7:30 a.m. and 4 p.m.
