This Article  • Full text PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Similar articles in JAMA  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

Melvin D. Cheitlin, MD
San Francisco General Hospital

JAMA. 1988;260(5):635.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

In Reply.—

I thank Dr Williams for his kind comments. He is quite correct that positron-emitting isotopes are usually obtained at present from a cyclotron and not from a breeder reactor. My mistake.

As to the relative cost of thallium 201 perfusion scanning vs that of MUGA wall-motion studies, my purpose was to put cost into relative ballpark categories. The cost of thallium has recently decreased, so that at my institution (San Francisco General Hospital) there is only a $25 difference between a dose of thallium 201 and technetium 99m ($60 for 1.11 x 10⁸ Bq of thallium vs $25 for technetium 99m plus $10 for technician time for dose labeling). The cost of a thallium perfusion stress test with a four-hour redistribution scan is $762, whereas a resting technetium 99m MUGA study is $455. With exercise, MUGA goes up to $650; 30% of this is professional fees. At . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter     What's this?