Role of Scintigraphy in Organ Transplants

With the advances in surgical techniques, and our better understanding of principles of immunological tolerance leading to advent of newer immunosuppressive therapy, Organ transplantation has become routine in many hospitals throughout the world, and transplantation today has become one of the therapy of choice for the treatment of end-stage diseases (kidney, heart, liver, lung, etc.). Survival statistics have remained encouraging and continue to improve with experience. Long term results are affected by a host of factors, and assessment of graft function post transplant is a multimodality approach with application of a number of serial imaging and non-imaging diagnostic procedures over many months or years, since no single test is found to be adequate for assessment of graft function. Nuclear medicine techniques have played a significant role in the success of transplant programs through measurements of blood flow and function in these grafts, as well as assessments of infection and rejection. Scintigraphy offers reproducible functional information. These attributes are suitable not only for preoperative evaluation of donors and recipients but also for monitoring the transplanted organs. This article reviews the role of nuclear medicine in organ transplantation and our experiences at Indraprastha Apollo Hospital in evaluation of renal and hepatic transplants. The role of new radiopharmaceuticals and the emerging role of Positron emission tomography is also discussed briefly.