In the last decade, many innovative nanodrugs have been developed, as well as many nanoradiocompounds that show amazing features in nuclear imaging and/or radiometabolic therapy. Their potential uses offer a wide range of possibilities. It can be possible to develop nondimensional systems of existing radiopharmaceuticals or build engineered systems that combine a nanoparticle with the radiopharmaceutical, a tracer, and a target molecule, and still develop selective nanodetection systems. This review focuses on recent advances regarding the use of gold nanoparticles and nanorods in nuclear medicine. The up-to-date advancements will be shown concerning preparations with special attention on the dimensions and functionalizations that are most used to attain an enhanced performance of gold engineered nanomaterials. Many ideas are offered regarding recent in vitro and in vivo studies. Finally, the recent clinical trials and applications are discussed.

The 2012 British Association of Endocrine and Thyroid Surgeons audit report showed that only 86 of 1359 patients who underwent adrenalectomy had a bilateral operation; thus the experience with this procedure remains limited. Retrospective review of patients undergoing bilateral adrenalectomy in a tertiary referral centre. Between November 2005 and January 2016, bilateral adrenalectomy was performed in 23 patients (6 male, 17 female, age 43 ± 4 years) diagnosed with Cushing’s disease (n = 13), hereditary phaeochromocytomas (n = 6), adrenocortical cancer (n = 2), colorectal metastatic disease (n = 1) and adrenocortical adenomas (n = 1). A laparoscopic transperitoneal approach was used in 17 patients, with one conversion to open. Three patients had open adrenalectomies for adrenocortical cancer and for simultaneous phaeochromocytomas and pancreatic neuroendocrine tumours in a patient with Von Hippel-Lindau syndrome. Three patients with Cushing’s had a bilateral retroperitoneoscopic operation. The mean operating time was 195 ± 16 minutes for laparoscopic operations (n = 16), 243 ± 44 minutes for open adrenalectomies (n = 4) and 151 ± 12 minutes for retroperitoneal operations. It was significantly shorter for Cushing’s disease than for phaeochromocytomas (162 ± 8 vs. 257 ± 39 minutes, P < 0.01). Median length of hospital stay was 5 days. Postoperative complications (Clavien-Dindo classification) included one chest infection (level 2), one postoperative haemorrhage and two chest drains for pneumothorax (level 3), two postoperative cardiac arrests (level 4) and one late cancer death from complications related to uncontrolled hypercortisolism (level 5). Synchronous bilateral adrenalectomy remains an infrequent operation. The laparoscopic approach is feasible in the majority of patients. It is likely that the retroperitoneoscopic adrenalectomy will become the standard approach for bilateral operations.

Background: Patients with low tumour burden follicular lymphoma (FL) are managed with an initial watchful waiting (WW) approach. The way to better predict the time-to-treatment (TTT) is still under investigation for its possible clinical impact. This study explored whether radiomic features extracted from baseline ¹⁸F-FDG PET/CT could predict TTT in FL patients on WW. Methods: Thirty-eight patients on initial WW (grade 1–3a) were retrospectively included from 2010 to 2019. Eighty-one PET/CT morphological and first-level intensity radiomic features were extracted from the total metabolic tumour burden (TMTV), the lesion having the highest SUVmax and a reference volume-of-interest placed on the healthy liver. Models using linear regression (LR) and support vector machine (SVM) were constructed to assess the feasibility of using radiomic features to predict TTT. A leave-one-out cross-validation approach was used to assess the performance. Results: For LR models, we found a root-mean-squared error of 29.4, 28.6, 26.4 and 26.8 and an R² of 0.03, 0.08, 0.21 and 0.20, respectively, incrementing the features from one to four. Accordingly, the best model included three features: the liver minimum SUV value, the liver SUV skewness and the sum of squared SUV values in the TMTV. For SVM models, accuracies of 0.79, 0.63, 0.76 and 0.68 and areas under the curve of 0.80, 0.72, 0.77 and 0.63 were found, respectively, incrementing the features from one to four. The best performing model used one feature, namely the median value of the lesion containing the SUVmax value. Conclusions: The baseline PET/CT radiomic approach has the potential to predict TTT in FL patients on WW. Integrating radiomics with clinical parameters could further aid in patient stratification.