Thoughts on nuc med?

[redalert]

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Happy 4th! Current R2 here thinking about nucs and was wondering what the career prospects of a general radiologist with nucs training are like. I enjoy nucs and think the field is heading in the right direction. I've heard about people who got jobs straight out of residency after completing the DR/NM pathway that sounds pretty nice. Nucs only jobs are probably only available at large academic centers, but are mixed radiology/nucs positions easy to come by in private practice? Is it necessary to complete a "real" fellowship in another subspecialty to complement training in nucs? Thanks!

 

[Rad2013]

If you are interested in larger groups there’s definitely a place for nuc med rads that also serve as body light and generalists.

 

[MadRadLad]

Very marketable, especially if you do the nucs pathway and get double boarded. Pure nucs trained docs are being phased out and rads-trained nucs, especially if you have a fellowship in body or neuro on top, are in high demand.

 

[redalert]

Thank you for the replies! I will most likely do the nucs pathway but am not too keen on doing a separate fellowship if I don't need to.

 

[MadRadLad]

If you do just the nucs pathway you are fine for the majority of gigs, especially if you are willing to do majority nucs + read a little mix of everything else. But if you do the nucs pathway + a non-nucs fellowship (body is helpful because you can do the full gamut of body + be the PET expert) you could probably name your job at most places. If you want to read higher end non-nucs studies at most big academic centers you will likely need a fellowship. But if you are fine mostly running the nucs service and covering the usual plain films, body CT, fluoro, ER coverage etc here and there then pretty much any practice would take you.

 

[OurDeadGrass]

nucs+body makes sense, but is there any synergistic benefit to doing nucs+neuro? are there new promising neuro related nucs studies? I've seen mostly brain death and epilepsy localization studies at our institution.

also how important is it to do a nucs fellowship to read nucs?

 

[guytakingboards]

nucs+body makes sense, but is there any synergistic benefit to doing nucs+neuro? are there new promising neuro related nucs studies? I've seen mostly brain death and epilepsy localization studies at our institution.

also how important is it to do a nucs fellowship to read nucs?

-Not a ton of overlap between nucs and neuro but that's part of the appeal. That's mostly two completely different skill sets. That has a lot of value to groups.

-Nucs-trained people are usually decent general body readers anyway because they read so much PET/CT. Doing a body fellowship on top will add body MR and/or procedure skills, but is that worth more than also being a fellowship-trained neuro rad?

-Yes there are promising neuro nucs studies being developed but i don't see them being high volume anytime soon. There's a lot of research being performed on Alzheimer's Disease in the fields of tau (e.g. Tauvid) and amyloid (e.g. Amyvid) imaging.

- It's like any other specialty, it has stuff that's within the domain of the general radiologist. e.g. V/Q, HIDA's, etc... Probably not doing Lu-177 imaging as a general rad though.

 

[GadRads]

Main issue with nucs is that the demand just isn't comparable to subspecialties like Neuro, mammo and IR which have more of a need across practice settings. It's like pediatric radiology which is mainly in large academic centers.