Current Indications for Nuclear Thyroid Imaging Clinic and Policlinic for Nuclear Medicine University of Wurzburg

The first thyroid scan has been acquired appr. 50 years ago with Iodine-131. Thyroid scintigraphy however became clinically relevant only after the introduction of Technetium-99m as a radiotracer in the early sixties. Today approximately 1.500.000 thyroid scans are performed yearly in Germany with Technetium-99m (a little bit less than 50% of all Nuclear Medicine examinations in Germany) (8). Recently the American Society of Nuclear Medicine (10-12) and the German Nuclear Medicine Society (2-5) published guidelines or procedure guidelines respectively for diagnosis of thyroid diseases.