Nuclear medicine expert concludes visit to Cuba

HAVANA, Cuba, Aug 1 (ACN) Today concludes a technical advisory visit by Dr. Diana Paez Gutierrez, head of the Nuclear Medicine and Diagnostic Imaging Section of the Division of Human Health, at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

The Colombian expert exchanged with her Cuban colleagues on the current state of nuclear medicine in the world and the development of new radiopharmaceuticals, the plan for the national production of the latter, called Positron Emission Tomography (PET), and the medical reports on Positron Emission Tomography + Computed Axial Tomography (PET/CT) studies in Cuba.

Paez Gutierrez held meetings at the Specialized Center for Diagnosis and Radiotherapy of the Center for Surgical Medical Research (CIMEQ), where a cyclotron is installed for the production of radiopharmaceuticals for PET diagnosis.

She was also received by Gladys Lopez Bejerano, president of the Nuclear Energy and Advanced Technologies Agency, and spoke with Cuba's National Liaison Officer to the IAEA, whose representation is at the Ministry of Science, Technology and Environment, and other authorities.

Positron Emission Tomography is a nuclear medicine technique that uses radiopharmaceuticals marked with positron emitters to obtain biochemical-metabolic images of the human body, and PET/CT is a hybrid instrument that makes it possible to simultaneously obtain metabolic and anatomical images of the region of the organism under study.

Diseases always begin at a molecular level and PET/CT diagnoses make it possible to detect metabolic alterations early, even before they become apparent, which is why it is used mainly in oncology, neurology and cardiology, among others.