Nuclear medicine training and practice in Spain

Excerpt

We can consider 1948 as the year in which nuclear medicine began in Spain with the constitution of the first Spanish group interested in the clinical applications of radioactive isotopes. This group was based at the Hospital Central de la Cruz Roja in Madrid and was involved in the presentation of the first scientific publication in this field. In 1949 the first studies using radioactive isotopes were performed in Spain [1]. In 1970 the Spanish Association of Nuclear Medicine (AEMN) was created as part of the Spanish Society of Medical Radiology and Electrology as, almost simultaneously, was the Spanish Society of Nuclear Medicine and Biology (SEMNB). At a meeting in 1977 it was decided that the AEMN and the SEMNB would dissolve to allow the creation of the Spanish Society of Nuclear Medicine (SEMN), with Dr. F.M. Doménech Torné as the first president. The statutes of the SEMN were approved 1 year after its creation, and administrative authorization as a scientific society was obtained. In the same year, the specialty of Nuclear Medicine was created in Spain [2]. The first SEMN congress was held in Zaragoza in 1979. With the evolution of the specialty, in 2009 the SEMN changed its name to the Spanish Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging (SEMNIM), which currently prevails. …