The modifications brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic to Nuclear Medicine practice.

Chatzipavlidou, Vasiliki

Nearly 19.9 million cases and more than 730 thousand disease-related deaths have been confirmed in the months that followed WHO's assessment that the novel coronavirus COVID-19, first emerged in Wuhan China on December 2019, could be characterized as a pandemic. The aforementioned coronavirus affected 188 countries as of 8.10.2020. Despite the continually increasing number of COVID-19 cases reported to CDC, at national level, the percentage of visits to outpatient providers and emergency departments has decreased and mortality rates attributed to COVID-19 have declined compared to the previous weeks, still above the baseline. It is common knowledge that the coronavirus pandemic has reshaped societies and economies around the globe, affecting all aspects of everyday life. Public health systems as a whole have been globally affected since they had to face extraordinary demands over a long period of time, which, in turn, required rapid adjustments in the operating procedures that were already in use, in order to provide high-standard health services, while respecting patients quality of life. Over half of deaths in low-income countries are caused by communicable diseases, maternal causes, conditions arising during pregnancy and childbirth, and nutritional deficiencies. On the contrary, this percentage is less than 7% in high-income countries. Noncommunicable diseases cause 71% of deaths globally, ranging from 37% in low-income countries to 88% in high-income countries. However, in terms of absolute number of deaths, 78% of global NCD deaths occurred in low-and middle-income countries. This partially explains why recent developments in medicine were mostly focused on chronic illnesses, including cardiovascular disease, cancer, chronic respiratory diseases and type 2 diabetes, rather than focusing on infection and inflammation progress. The COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent burden it placed upon health systems to deal with infectious and non-infectious diseases in a poor environment, can become an opportunity to update the field of medical research and change the governmental policies in place that have been stagnant and/or inefficient and ill-managed. This way, health systems will be equipped with better and faster protocols and best practices in order to manage efficiently any other pandemic that might emerge in the future. In this context, Nuclear Medicine departments should reconsider and update their practices, by altering routines and workflows in order to comply with the new sanitary standards, triaging their appointments, or introducing new diagnostic methods like Tele-Medicine / Tele Nuclear Medicine and Artificial Intelligence applications. This special edition of Hellenic Journal of Nuclear Medicine has as its main purpose to introduce and communicate those new practices and protocols/standard operating procedures, in order for the scientific community, health public institutions, affected individuals and their families to be duly informed.