The Toast of Vienna

The Infection and Inflammation Task Group have two reasons to celebrate (Fig. 1). Firstly, at the last meeting of the EANM Executive Committee in February, it was decided that the Task Group should be upgraded to committee status. This was a reward for the hard work of the chair Prof. A. Signore and his team in producing four sets of procedural guidelines and in developing links with other societies. This leads on to the second reason to celebrate: the Infection and Inflammation Task Group has just held a very successful joint meeting with the European Society of Radiology (ESR) at their annual conference in Vienna on March 1, 2012.

Fig. 1

Members of the Infection and Inflammation Task Group celebrate its transformation into a committee

This session was co-chaired by Prof. P. Bourguet, President of the EANM, and Prof. A. Palko, President of the ESR. There were two speakers from the EANM including Prof. A. Signore and another member of the Infection and Inflammation Task Group, Prof. O. Israel.

Prof. A. Signore presented work on the use of nuclear medicine in imaging inflammatory bowel disease with the radiologists’ view being given by Prof. F. Maccion. MR is the best radiological technique with the advantage of not using ionizing radiation and, by using different sequences, allows the assessment of disease activity. However, there is a limit to the number of centres able to have a high-field machine and the time to perform all the required imaging. Nuclear medicine techniques are highly sensitive and specific to disease activity, but are seen as having poor resolution, although the advent of SPECT/CT has dealt with this issue. There was a general consensus that many patients may need both labelled white cell scintigraphy and MRI.

The second topic of the symposium was the imaging of infected vascular grafts. In this session, Prof. O. Israel reported that ¹⁸F-FDG can give rapid and accurate imaging of an infected graft, but that anatomical correlation is essential to localize any site of abnormal uptake in the graft itself. Prof. A. Romero-Jaramillo showed data concerning the use of radiological techniques, and especially the role of MRI which produces a higher level of soft-tissue characterization than CT.

The new Infection and Inflammation Committee is repeating this symposium at the EANM congress in Milan in October. The new committee is also forging links with the ESR, specialist radiological societies and specialist medical societies to help in the writing of referral guidelines. A one-day multidisciplinary conference is being held in Milan on Saturday October 27 as an official pre-congress meeting of the EANM. Details of how to register for the meeting can be found on the EANM’12 conference website.

The new Infection and Inflammation Committee will also hold a meeting during the EANM congress for those interested in its work, and the committee is keen to hear from anyone who would be interested in participating in its work.