[Legal implications of information to the patient in nuclear medicine]

Every patient has the right to be informed about a medical procedure. The nuclear medicine physician has the duty to inform the patients and, if necessary, to obtain a reasonable written consent before some radioisotopic examinations. The following must be considered in every informed consent of a nuclear medicine procedure: the need for the patient information ("why"), the type of information given ("how"), the person who performs it ("who"), the moment in the time ("when") and the place ("where") where the consent is performed. It must always be kept in mind that, although the informed consent has a protection function from the medicolegal point of view, this function may be lost if the consent is not performed correctly. In this paper the importance and the medicolegal implications of the patient information in Nuclear Medicine are evaluated and discussed.