Abstract
The foundations of nuclear medicine in Vietnam were established from 1970. Until now, after 48 years of development, in Vietnam, we have some basic equipment including 31 SPECT, 4 SPECT/CT machines, 11 PET/CT scanners, five cyclotrons, and one nuclear reactor. Many nuclear medicine techniques in diagnosis and treatment have been routinely performed at provincial and central level health facilities such as tumor scintigraphy, thyroid scintigraphy, bone scintigraphy, kidney scintigraphy, cardiac scintigraphy, and radio-isotope therapy with I-131 and P-32. Selective internal radiation therapy with Y-90 microsphere and I-125 radioactive seed implantation has been also successfully applied in some big hospitals. However, there are still many difficulties for Vietnam as the lack of new widely used radioisotopes such as Ga-67, Cu-64, Samarium-153, and Lutetium-177 and the lack of nuclear medicine specialists. In the future, we are putting our efforts on the applications of new isotopes in diagnosis and treatment of cancers (theranostic) like Ga-68-DOTATATE, Lutetium-177-DOTATATE, Ga-68-PSMA, and Lutetium-177-PSMA, equipping modern nuclear medicine diagnostic tools, strengthening the human resources training in nuclear medicine. At the same time, we are trying our best to strengthen the cooperation with international nuclear medicine societies in over the world.
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Acknowledgments
On behalf of the research group, I wish to thank various people for their contribution to this study. Firstly, I would like to express my deep gratitude to the Board of Directors of the Nuclear and Oncology Center at Bach Mai Hospital for providing the best conditions for the study group. I would also like to show my appreciation to Professor Phan Sy An for his useful advice. My grateful thanks are also extended to Professor Dong Soo Lee for his patient guidance and enthusiastic encouragement for this research work.
I would like to extend my thanks to all doctors, physicians, nurses, and technicians at the Nuclear and Oncology Center for their help during the study.
Finally, I wish to thank our family members for their support and encouragement throughout this time.
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Mai Trong Khoa, Pham Cam Phuong, Bui Tien Cong, Tran Hai Binh, Pham Van Thai, Dao Manh Phuong, and sTran Dinh Ha declare that they have no conflict of interest. There is no source of funding.
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Mai, T., Pham, C., Bui, T. et al. Efforts in the Formation and Development of Nuclear Medicine in Vietnam. Nucl Med Mol Imaging 53, 83–85 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13139-018-00570-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13139-018-00570-x