Nuclear medicine and the surgeon.

Nuclear medicine provides the surgeon with important diagnostic and functional information on specific organs and with therapy for a limited set of diseases. Clinical applications of nuclear medicine are beginning to guide surgeons to specific locations, notably to sentinel lymph nodes in patients with cancer. The role of radionuclide diagnosis in oncology has been covered earlier in this Lancet series, so here is a surgeon's perspective on sentinel node and other oncological applications and on the surgical value of nuclear medicine in non-malignant diseases.