title: The effect of an iodine restricted including no sea foods diet, on technetium-99m thyroid scintigraphy: a neglected issue in nuclear medicine practice.
abstract: Although it is recommended to patients to avoid sea food and iodine-containing medications prior to iodine-131 (¹³¹I) scanning, the efficacy of this diet as for technetium-99m pertechnetate ((99m)Tc-P) thyroid scintigraphy is not well addressed in the literature. We evaluated a self-managed, outpatients, iodine restricted diet (IRD) designed to reduce total body iodine in preparation for such a scan. We have studied 39 patients who referred to our Department for multinodular goiter, 30 females and 9 males, aged:14-54 years and their (99m)Tc-P thyroid scintigraphy showed poor visualization of the thyroid gland. These patiens were living in regions with high consumption of sea foods went underwent a two-weeks iodine restriction including restriction of sea food diet for the reduction of iodine body content. These patients were called for a repeated scan after going on a IRD for at least two weeks. The two scans were compared visually, and by semiquantitative analysis. Semiquantitative analysis was applied in 8 regions of interest (ROI) by using Wilcoxon signed rank test. Thirty-six subjects had better quality scintigraphy images in the post IRD thyroid scan, as was visually assessed by two nuclear medicine physicians. Semiquantitatetively, there was a significant difference in the mean counts of ROI of the right and the left thyroid lobes in favor of the post IRD scans (P<0.05). In conclusion, this study suggests that in patients with multinodular goiter, living in regions with high consumption of sea foods a two-weeks diet for the reduction of iodine body content induces in most of the cases a slightly better diagnostic thyroid (99m)Tc-P scan.
authors.affiliation: Golestan Research Center of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, Golestan University of Medical Sciences, Iran.
authors.forename: Hamid
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Javadi
authors.forename: Isa
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Neshandarasli
authors.forename: Mehdi
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Mogharrabi
authors.forename: Sara
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Jalallat
authors.forename: Iraj
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Nabipour
authors.forename: Majid
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Assadi
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D016477:Artifacts; D005260:Female; D006042:Goiter / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging*; D006801:Humans; D007089:Image Enhancement / Q000379:methods; D007455:Iodine / Q000008:administration & dosage*; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D019275:Radiopharmaceuticals; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D017747:Seafood; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D013667:Technetium; D013961:Thyroid Gland / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging* / Q000187:drug effects*; D015899:Tomography, Emission-Computed, Single-Photon / Q000379:methods
chemical_list: D019275:Radiopharmaceuticals; D013667:Technetium; D007455:Iodine