Medicine, radionuclides used

Quality assurance of radiopharmaceutical preparation and use is obviously a very important topic because of its direct impact on patient diagnosis, treatment and health (see, e.g. Abreu 1996). Reference materials play only a small - but nevertheless important -role in this process, mainly in the area of calibration of radioactivity-measuring instruments. The materials of interest are all pure chemical containing calibrated activities of selected radionuclides used commonly in nuclear medicine (e.g. Co, Ga, I,... 

Nuclear explosions and nuclear power production are the major sources of anthropogenic activity in the environment. But radionuclide use in medicine, industry, agriculture, education, and production and transport, use, and disposal from these activities present opportunities for wastes to enter the environment (Whicker and Schultz 1982a Table 32.6). Radiation was used as early as... 

Nuclear explosions and nuclear power production are the major sources of human radioactivity in the environment. Other sources include radionuclide use in medicine, industry, agriculture,... 

A survey of radionuclides used in nuclear medicine is given in Table 19.2. Many of these radionuclides are also applied in biochemical and agricultural studies with animals and plants. 

Table 16 Some Metallic Radionuclides Used in Nuclear Medicine sos.so ...

Table 7.4 Some radionuclides used diagnostically in nuclear medicine...

Problem lOJO. What are the important characteristics of a radionuclide useful in medicine ... 

Yttrium, Y, is another radionuclide used in nuclear medicine its handling requires special attention because of (i) its short half-life (64 h) and (ii) its method of obtention. Indeed °Y is prepared from Sr therefore, the obtained compound is always contaminated by its parent species °Sr, an unacceptable side product for medical applications. The ligand (119) is very selective for the extraction of °Y over Sr + from aqueous solutions into chloroform by this method a highly pure (>99.9%) sample of °Y can be obtained <93ANC1350>. 

Radioactive sources are used throughout the world in medicine, industry, agriculture, research and education they are also used in some military applications. Many are in the form of sealed sources with the radioactive materials firmly contained or bound within a suitable capsule or housing. The risks posed by these sources vary widely, depending on such factors as the radionuclides used, the physical and chemical form and the activity. 

In some practices, such as nuclear medicine, radionuclides with a short half-life are used in a source form that is unsealed. Examples of such applications include Tc in radiodiagnosis and I in radiotherapy. In such situations, the principles of the categorization system may be applied to... 

Radionuclide uses in diagnostic medicine have increased tremendously in the past several decades, and today, one-third of the annual 40-50 million diagnostic procedures in the United States are performed with radionuclides. The most widely used radionuclide in nuclear medicine is technetium-99m ( Tc, Ty = 6.0 h), the daughter of 66 h molybdenum-99 ( Mo). Tc-99m is used in 70% of all radionuclide diagnostic procedures with an estimated 16 million medical tests per year (approximately 45,000 per day) and 4—5 billion dollars cost to patients annually in the USA. 

Radiopharmacy is a discipline concerned with the preparation and quality control of radiopharmaceuticals. The term radiopharmacy is also used for the pharmacy where these activities are carried out Radiopharmaceuticals are medicinal products that contain radionuclides (radioactive isotopes). Radionuclides are produced in nuclear reactors or in cyclotrons. The most important radionuclides used in nuclear medicine are technetium and fluoride. 

The chemistry of iodine radionuclides used in nuclear medicine has been extensively explored. Isotopic exchange procedures, direct iodination approaches (those using chloramine-T and iodogen), and indirect approaches (the Bolton-Hunter method) are but a few of the well-known synthetic strategies to label biomolecules with iodine (24). Some of the most important 1-labeled imaging tracers [1-labeled iodoazomycin arabinoside ( lAZA), 1-labeled vasoactive intestinal peptide ( 1-VlP), etc.] will be discussed in the following sections. 

A sample of water contaminated by the accidental discharge of a radionuclide used for medicinal purposes showed an activity of 12,436 counts per second at the time of sampling and 8,966 cps exactly 30 days later. What is the half-life of the radionuclide ... 

Metals continue to play an important role in radiopharmaceuticals for diagnostic and therapeutic applications in nuclear medicine. Radiopharmaceuticals are drugs that contain a radionuclide and are used for imaging if the radionuclide is a photon emitter (gamma (7) or positron (/3+)) or for... 

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