[Scintigraphic diagnosis of inflammation and infection]

Nuclear medicine, diagnostic and therapeutic application of open sources of ionizing radiation in medicine, has wide range of possibilities for non-invasive infection and inflammation detection. The broad spectrum of methods, some of which are already in routine use while the others are still in the phase of investigation, improvement, or clinical trials, is presented. Most of the methods in routine use are capable of detection and localisation of both inflammation and infection. Antibiotic and antimicrobe peptides labelings have the possibility to diagnose infection and to differentiate it from inflammation, which is not the case with other scintigraphic methods. Availability of the radiopharmaceuticals and nuclear-medicine equipment, radiation exposure of the patient, clinical situation, the baseline pathophysiology of a process, and costs are the factors which contribute to the choice of the diagnostic approach. In order to ease the choice of the appropriate diagnostic method for inflammation/infection detection in different clinical situations, the recommendations from the ISORBE (International Society of Radiolabelled Blood Elements) are quoted.