I am writing this at the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging meeting in Anaheim, California. Originally I was thinking that I would give a day by day account of the meeting. However, I think that would not be interesting and to be honest the are no exciting new tracers being launched though hopefully one or two PSMA products will receive approval in the next 12 months. There is an interesting new SPECT-CT camera which uses a technique of multiple detectors which oscillate to produce an image with a sensitivity of at least double that of an Anger camera. Also the Explorer whole body PET scanner (by which I mean the whole body is imaged in 2m of PET detectors) approaches a commercial launch. Again this is a very sensitive machine needing only 10% of the present activity of a PET pharmaceutical or 10% of the present acquisition time to produce an image.

I decided however, to think about a different aspect of the meeting. We were very honoured to have a meeting with the leadership of the SNMMI. We are looking at much closer co-operation which will hopefully include a permanent BNMS session at the SNMMI and a permanent SNMMI session at the BNMS. We hope this will improve links between our 2 societies and encourage a new generation of British nuclear medicine professionals to join the SNMMI and participate in  all they can offer.

When we were meeting with the leadership of he SNMMI we looked at what nuclear medicine is doing in terms of public engagement. The SNMMI runs an annual nuclear medicine week but that is often directed to the hospital in which that department is placed. However there was also a forum for patient advocacy groups to interact with the SNMMI. This was run by a committee of interested patients covering a wide range of disease interests including a range of cancers and non-oncological disease.

The Sunday of the conference was “patient day”. A series of talks were set up for patients which were chosen by the patient advocacy groups and the introduction consisted of 2 talks one on “What is nuclear medicine” and an Oncologist talking about clinical trials. This was followed by a Q and A session. There was then a lunch where patients and nuclear medicine doctors could talk in an informal way followed by some disease specific breakout groups. The results of these discussions could then be published on each patient advocacy group’s newsletter and web site. I know all this sounds very American but there is a clear advantage such that when nuclear medicine scans or treatments are needed patients can access good quality information and help to reduce the stress of these procedures for patients and well as their carers. There is a further clear advantage in that nuclear medicine gains important allies who can help in the process of getting our tests both more widely known but also funded. I think this is an approach we should think about within the BNMS.

Dr John Buscombe

BNMS President