Chapter 16: Radiopharmaceuticals in Dermatologic Imaging and Therapy Check Access

Skin is an organ system, which includes not only the skin but also its associated appendages, like hair and nails. These are sites of a wide range of both benign and malignant disease processes. Nuclear medicine plays a vital role in diagnosis, prognostication, response assessment and surveillance of malignant conditions, such as melanoma and other non-melanoma skin cancers. [¹⁸F]2-fluoro-2-deoxy glucose ([¹⁸F]FDG) positron emission tomography (PET)–computerized tomography (CT) is the cornerstone of oncology practice and is supplemented by a wide variety of newly developed radiopharmaceuticals which are specific to conditions such as melanoma. Additionally, both PET and single photon emission computerized tomography (SPECT) radiopharmaceuticals play a pivotal role in diagnosis of benign skin conditions, such as lymphedema and dermatomyositis. The therapeutic potential of nuclear medicine has also been harnessed to treat refractory superficial skin conditions, such as keloids, hypertrophic scars and superficial basal cell carcinomas. Most of these agents are at the stage of pre-clinical and early clinical trials and still require validation in large scale randomised control trials.