Technetium-99m generatorCourtesy Brookhaven National LaboratoryA sudden shortage of a radioisotope
used in about 14 million medical procedures each year in the US is causing concern within the medical community.

Technetium-99m, an isotope derived from radioactive molybdenum-99, is in short supply because one of the key processing facilities in Canada has gone off-line for some overdue maintenance. The Chalk River reactor in Ontario was supposed to shutdown for five days but has remained out of service for nearly two weeks now.

Technetium-99m is used in a number of nuclear medical procedures including bone scans, treating heart and gall-bladder disease, as well as cancer, but because it’s in short supply doctors are fearful that diagnostics may suffer. Medical facilities will have to either cut back in the critical procedures or use less of the technetium-99m and hope the quality of test results don’t suffer.

The Chalk River reactor produces nearly all the radioactive molybdenum-99 used in North America (some comes from European and South African reactors). The radioisotope is then stored in technetium-99m generators allowing technetium, a short-lived decay product, to be withdrawn as needed. Because of its relatively short half-life (about six hours), technetium-99m delivers only a small dose of radioactivity to patients.

"The crunch will come next week if the shortage persists and it looks as if it will," said Dr. Edwin Palmer, director of clinical nuclear medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital.

Unfortunately, the reactor isn’t expected to come back on-line until the end of December or early January

LINKS

MedPageToday story
New York Times story