What are the side effects of technetium-99m?

What are the side effects of technetium-99m?

What are the side effects of technetium-99m?

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  • Blurred vision.
  • chest pain or discomfort.
  • dizziness, faintness, or lightheadedness when getting up suddenly from a lying or sitting position.
  • fainting.
  • fast, slow, or irregular heartbeat.
  • hives, itching, or redness.
  • lightheadedness.
  • nausea.

What does technetium do to the body?

Technetium (Tc-99m) is an isotope commonly used in a number of medical diagnostic imaging scans. Tc99m is used as a radioactive tracer for nuclear medicine; which is a form of medical imaging that assesses how particular parts of our body are working or functioning.

How does technetium-99m leave the body?

Technetium-99 can pose a health risk when it enters the body. Once in the human body, Tc-99 concentrates in the thyroid gland and the gastrointestinal tract. However, the body constantly gets rid of Tc-99 in feces.

Why is technetium-99m safe?

Technetium-99m will present a risk if it gains entry to the body. It can be inhaled, ingested and absorbed (and injected), and the risk varies according to the chemical form. It has a short radiological half life, but its biological half- life varies widely according to the compound to which it is attached.

What does technetium 99m detect?

Tc-99m is the preferred tracer for a number of scans used in medicine worldwide to help diagnose medical conditions. Tc-99m scans are used to detect a wide range of conditions including injuries, infections, tumours, heart disease, thyroid abnormalities, kidney conditions and also to guide some cancer procedures.

Is technetium found in nature?

Technetium is a chemical element with the symbol Tc and atomic number 43. Nearly all available technetium is produced as a synthetic element. Naturally occurring technetium is a spontaneous fission product in uranium ore and thorium ore, the most common source, or the product of neutron capture in molybdenum ores.

Is technetium-99m toxic?

Technetium-99m has a photopeak of gamma-ray emission of 140.5 keV, making it a very minimal risk of toxicity. [3] The short six-hour half-life and rapid excretion from the body limit toxic effects and give enough time to perform its diagnostic imaging, all while limiting radiation exposure to the patient.

What does the M mean in technetium-99m?

Technetium-99m is a metastable nuclear isomer, as indicated by the “m” after its mass number 99. This means it is a decay product whose nucleus remains in an excited state that lasts much longer than is typical.

What is unique about technetium?

Technetium is the lightest radioactive element on the periodic table and its isotopes decay into a variety of other elements including stable ruthenium. The big advantage of technetium-99m (half-life six hours) is that it is produced by decay from the much longer lived isotope molybdenum-99 (half-life 67 hours).

Where is technetium used?

What does the M mean in Tc-99m?

Technetium-99m
Technetium-99m is a metastable nuclear isomer, as indicated by the “m” after its mass number 99. This means it is a decay product whose nucleus remains in an excited state that lasts much longer than is typical.

Is it possible to transmute all the technetium-99?

Technetium-99 is the most abundant element (810 g per tonne of uranium (TU) in nuclear fuel) and the most important one to transmute. Technetium is able to capture neutrons effectively under certain conditions, so the transmutation of this fission product is feasible, if not economical, in specialised reactors.

What part of the body is technetium most useful for scanning?

parathyroid tissue
Technetium seems to be the most useful in practical application, and it is concentrated by parathyroid tissue (Fig. 27.1), effectively identifying adenomas in up to 90% of cases.

How is technetium-99m used in medicine?

Technetium-99m is used to image the skeleton and heart muscle in particular, but also for brain, thyroid, lungs, liver, spleen, kidney, gall bladder, bone marrow, salivary and lachrymal glands, heart blood pool, infection and numerous specialized medical studies.

Why is technetium special?

What percentage of technetium-99m would remain in your body 24 hours after injection with this radioisotope?

Technetium-99m can be readily detected in the body by medical equipment because it emits 140.5 keV gamma rays (these are about the same wavelength as emitted by conventional X-ray diagnostic equipment), and its half-life for gamma emission is six hours (meaning 94% of it decays to 99Tc in 24 hours).

What does the 99 mean in technetium-99m?

Isotopes of technetium. Complete table of nuclides. Technetium-99 (99Tc) is an isotope of technetium which decays with a half-life of 211,000 years to stable ruthenium-99, emitting beta particles, but no gamma rays.