Perioperative use of radioisotopes

A variety of nuclear medicine imaging techniques utilizing a number of different radioisotopes play an important part in the perioperative management of the surgical patient. This contribution outlines the roles of different radioisotopes used in functional imaging, in various clinical settings during the preoperative, intraoperative and postoperative periods. The recent rapid growth in the availability and diversity of applications of PET/CT and SPECT/CT is also discussed.