Nuclear medicine and paediatrics: Radiopharmaceutical point of view

Nuclear medicine applied to pediatrics widely benefited from evolutions brought to radiopharmaceutical drugs. The use of less irradiant radionuclides in the state of track contributed to the development of the nuclear pediatrics, while optimizing the administered doses. For this purpose, diverse methods of calculation were proposed, the most recent by the European Association of Nuclear Medicine (EANM) using a classification according to radiopharmaceutical drugs. The prescription of these drugs for children concerns the various organs such as kidneys, bone, cerebral tissues, thyroid gland, and cancerous tissues. But it has to take into account the pharmacokinetics of drugs in view of the physiological peculiarities of the child, as the immaturity of the kidney, the maturation and the bone growth, the activation of the brown fatty tissue, the cerebral distribution of drugs. (c) 2012 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.