Nuclear medicine in the Brazilian Unified Health System.

Abstract

Radiol Bras. 2014 Mai/Jun;47(3):VII–VIII The article published by Pozzo et al. in the present issue of Radiologia Brasileira approaches interesting and intriguing aspects of the situation of nuclear medicine in the Unified Health System (SUS). Firstly, the article observes that, apparently, the Datasus register system lacks reliability, considering that a significant number of nuclear medicine apparatuses registered in such a data system of the Federal Government (440 out of 875 registered apparatuses) would be incorrectly categorized, since they are not included in the Comissao Nacional de Energia Nuclear (CNEN) databank and therefore would be installed in dental and/or radiological clinics which, theoretically, do not have nuclear medicine services. However, on the basis of the mentioned study, it is not possible to identify the exact reasons for the discrepancies observed between the two databanks. It is worrisome to recognize that there are clinics and laboratories charging SUS for nuclear medicine services and that are not registered and/or licensed at CNEN. The integration of those two databanks is essential to identify the reasons for the difference in the number of registered services authorized to perform nuclear medicine procedures for SUS. The finding that there are services registered at CNEN but not included in the Datasus databank may be explained by the fact that such services only perform procedures in the sphere of supplementary healthcare or as private healthcare providers. Another aspect that draws the readers’ attention is the huge lack of government-owned services to provide nuclear medicine procedures to the Brazilian population. Among all services performing scintigraphic procedures, only 6.3% are public. Equally, 82% of the total of almost 393,000 diagnostic procedures supported by SUS were performed by private services. In the Northern and Mid-western regions, it is observed that such procedures are almost exclusively performed by private for-profit institutions. This corroborates a fact that is already quite known in the healthcare field in general, where the resources allocated to the public health system are limited as compared with other countries where healthcare is considered a priority in terms of investment. The Brazilian Unified Health System could be considered successful as a concept and proposi-