Nuclear medicine and atherosclerosis.

Although the pathomechanisms of atherosclerosis are well known, their radioisotopic monitoring is still in its early childhood. The current radioisotope techniques are of only limited value for contributing to the clinical diagnosis of atherosclerosis. The limited reaction time of cellular blood constituents (platelets, monocytes) with the vascular surface at the injury site makes it very difficult to catch the point of injury. Lipoproteins excellently allow receptor imaging, while vascular monitoring is only of scientific interest at present. Labelling and subsequent imaging of components of the coagulation cascade have not succeeded so far, nor have attempts using unspecific labels such as porphyrin, polyclonal IgG and Fc fragments, for example. Preliminary evidence indicates that radioisotopic techniques may be of great benefit in the future in elucidating functional aspects of the disease, while they do not contribute to examining the stage and extent of atherosclerosis.