What are the best imaging and treatment approaches to ensure safe and effective monitoring of disease status for patients with kidney disease?

Imaging gives doctors a powerful tool to see what's going on inside the body beyond what blood tests or symptoms alone can reveal. It's an essential part of managing multiple myeloma at every stage, from diagnosing the disease to determining how advanced it is to monitoring how well treatment is working and catching signs of a possible relapse. Best imaging techniques can pick up signs of myeloma within the bone marrow as well as outside of it. By providing this level of detail, imaging helps guide personalized care decisions and supports better outcomes for patients. Individuals living with kidney impairment may need to be careful when it comes to contrast dyes which are sometimes used with imaging techniques. In this Health Tree University video, you will learn that the best imaging modulatisto used to ensure safe and effective monitoring of your disease status. What are the best imaging modalities to use to ensure safe and effective monitoring of disease status for patients with kidney disease? Some of the contrast we use for different imaging studies may have impact on kidney function which is why it's important to factor in kidney function when you decide on imaging and contrast use. The main one we worry about with contrast is CT contrast. So CT scan that is done with contrast. The contrast that's used for CT scan is cleared from the kidneys so patients who have impaired kidney even before getting the contrast may be further impaired. It's important to keep in mind that CT scans can be done without contrast as well which are completely fine to do even with kidney dysfunction, even in patients who have dialysis. But if you need contrast for the CT scan, it's still feasible to do with kidney dysfunction but we may need to give some hydration, monitoring beforehand and also consider if there are alternatives to giving contrast for the CT scan. So that's CT scan. The contrast that you use for a PET scan does not really affect the kidneys so it's completely safe to do a PET scan with contrast regardless of kidney function. So that's the PET scan. Finally, the MRI again can be done with or without contrast. The contrast that we use for doing the MRI is okay to do in some levels of kidney dysfunction but patients who have very severe kidney dysfunction may not be able to get the contrast for the MRI. The bottom line is I think if a patient has kidney dysfunction of any variety and is getting an imaging scan, it would be a reasonable thing to discuss with their doctor about which are the different types of scans, what contrast is being used, would that affect the kidney function or not. And also if a contrast is needed, would it be feasible to use one that would not affect the kidney function. But many of these contrasts are perfectly safe with different levels of kidney function, PET scans for instance or CT scans and MRIs without contrast. So there's definitely imaging options and good imaging options even for patients with kidney dysfunction.