Prevalence and challenges of pediatric studies in the nuclear medicine clinic

Objectives Pediatric studies make up an important part of all studies done in nuclear medicine clinics. Special precautions or preparations need to be made in order to handle these cases, particularly in the absence of a pediatric department in our hospital. The purpose of the current study was to evaluate prevalence and challenges of pediatric cases in our nuclear medicine clinic.

Methods We reviewed all nuclear medicine studies acquired in our institution between 11/1/2007 to 11/19/2008 to determine the frequency of pediatric cases. A pediatric patient was determined as any patient under the age of 18 at the time of diagnosis. PET studies were not included in our analysis. Reports for pediatric scans were retrospectively reviewed to evaluate encountered problems including the need for sedation, patient motion and suboptimal quality exam.

Results A total of 1682 nuclear medicine studies were performed in the time period studied. Of those 1682 studies, 302 (18%) were acquired in pediatric cases. Our pediatric population comprised of 54% male, 46% female; the mean age was 9.5 years. Sedation was used in 34% of all pediatric cases and compromised image quality was reported in 23% of studied patients due to patient motion and positioning problems.

Conclusions Even without a pediatric department in our hospital, pediatric cases represented 18% of our nuclear medicine volume. Pediatric cases present challenging problems to Nuclear Medicine departments, which requires patient-tailored solutions and collaboration of different services/ departments in order to avoid compromising image quality.