TUCSON (Jan. 31, 2023) – The Banner – University Medical Center Tucson nuclear medicine program has been designated a Comprehensive Radiopharmaceutical Therapy Center of Excellence by the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging (SNMMI).
The Banner – University Medical Center Tucson nuclear medicine program is the first program to gain the comprehensive center of excellence designation within Arizona. The rigorous standards make this recognition the highest and most prestigious level achievable by SNMMI and the designation is valid two years upon receipt of recognition.
“With the opening of the theranostic radiopharmaceutical center at Banner, we are proud to bring personalized care and precision medicine to our patients in Tucson,” said Bital Savir-Baruch, MD, FACN, division chief of nuclear medicine at Banner – University Medicine and the University of Arizona College of Medicine Tucson.
Theranostics is a combination of the terms therapeutics and diagnostics. Theranostics describes the combination of using one radioactive drug to identify (diagnose) and a second radioactive drug to deliver therapy to treat the tumor/disease. Nuclear medicine and molecular imaging use small and safe amounts of radioactive material inside the body to see how organs or tissue are functioning (for diagnosis) or to target and destroy damaged or diseased organs or tissue (for treatment).
Designated centers of excellence meet strict regulatory, training, qualification, experience, and performance criteria to help assure patients, their families, referring physicians, and payors that rigorous procedures are in place and followed.
The Banner multidisciplinary care team consists of board-certified physicians specializing in nuclear medicine, hematology oncology, endocrinology, interventional radiology, radiation oncology, surgery, certified technologists, nurses, nurse practitioners, a radiation safety team and medical physicists. Delivering excellent patient care is the team’s number one priority.
The center offers a complete range of diagnostic nuclear medicine imaging and therapeutic procedures and performs clinical trials. The team is the first in southern Arizona to offer 177Lu PSMA-617 (Pluvicto) therapy for patients with metastatic prostate cancer.
Banner – University Medical Center Tucson and Banner – University Medical Center South are part of Banner – University Medicine, a premier academic medical network. These institutions are academic medical centers for the University of Arizona College of Medicine – Tucson. Included on the two campuses are Diamond Children's Medical Center and many specialty clinics. The two academic medical centers are part of Arizona-based Banner Health, one of the largest nonprofit health care systems in the country. Banner Health is in six states: Arizona, California, Colorado, Nebraska, Nevada and Wyoming. For more information, visit bannerhealth.com/universitytucson or bannerhealth.com/universitysouth.
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