Ventilation scintigraphy: is it really safe now with COVID-19 pandemic?

Aim/Introduction: Ventilation-perfusion scintigraphy in the emergency setting is essential for some patients However, with the COVID-19 pandemic and most infected patient beings asymptomatic, ventilation procedure became particularly challenging due to the generation of extremely small carbon aerosols (0 005-0 2 μm) Nuclear medicine technicians may therefore be at higher risk of COVID-19 The aim of these work was to assess the risk of infection and thereby implement additional procedure safety standards if necessary Materials and Methods: Ventilation simulation with Thecnegas generator and phantom able to perform inspiration and exhale was performed Technicians individual equipment used for protection was head cover, face protection, mask N95, gown and foot protection Millenium VH gamma camera without collimators was used to measure the activity in individual equipment, technician lung, walls, the floor and the Thecnegas generator All the data was corrected for the background and for decay Results: Gown had the higher particles contamination (17KBq) Relative to gown the head cover had 5% (0 9 KBq), face protection 3% (0 5 KBq), mask N95 9% (1 5 KBq),foot protection 6%(1 0 KBq) The personal uniform was evaluated and the pants had 5% (0 8 KBq) and the shirt had 1% (0 2 KBq) The total contamination of the components of the room had a medium of contamination of 0 9 KBq (min 0 004 KBq;max 5 5 KBq) The lungs and the face radioactive contamination after the removal of all the protection equipment, even without a shower, were lower than the detection sensitive of the gamma camera Conclusion: These preliminary results suggest that protective individual equipment reduce the probability of particle lung aspiration by the technicians, aspect very important when we perform this procedure in a patient infected with the corona virus