BOOK REVIEW
N u c l e a r C a r d i o l o g y in E v e r y d a y P r a c t i c e J. Candell-Riera and D. Ortega-Alcalde, eds., Klewer Academic Publishers, 1994 Nuclear cardiology has evolved into a mature subspecialty of cardiology, with important applications not only in diagnosis of cardiac disease, but also in prognostic assessment, monitoring of treatment, and assessment of myocardial metabolism. With this evolution comes an added complexity; new radiopharmaceuticals and techniques of data acquisition and processing greatly expand the choices of studies available to the clinician. An understanding of these emerging concepts is essential to the clinician and nuclear medicine specialist for appropriate test selection and interpretation. This book provides an overview of the basics in nuclear cardiology, intended for general clinicians, nuclear medicine physicians, and cardiologists with an interest in knowing the field in more depth.
The book is organized with the initial 10 chapters primarily concerned with radiopharmaceuticals, image processing, and the methodology of acquisition and interpretation of various nuclear cardiology procedures. Basic nuclear medicine physics is included. The chapter on stress testing (exercise and pharmacologic), a topic often neglected in textbooks on imaging, is succinct and clinically relevant, and may be particularly helpful for nuclear medicine physicians who must interpret stress perfusion studies. The acquisition and interpretation of most clinically relevant nuclear cardiology procedures is covered. The book would benefit, however, from a separate chapter dedicated to positron emission tomography (PET); although PET is not widely available, the unique technology and enormous potential of this technique warrants a separate, focused discussion. In addition, quality control of SPECT studies could have been covered in more detail. The middle chapters are concerned with various clinical applications of nuclear cardiology, and are complete in scope and content. The final four chapters concern decision-making, statistics, and cost analysis. These chapters apply to any diagnostic test, and are timely discussions in the current era of scrutiny of new technologies.
Chapters on gated blood-pool ventriculography are concise and well-written. Topics covered include the technique of study acquisition and analysis, methods for ventricular volume measurement, and