Medical scans may get costlier: report

That method enables 20 million medical scans and other treatments,such as targeting cancer cells for destruction,each year. But,the recent shortages have forced physicians to begin cutting back on the procedures.

“There has been some move away from nuclear medicine procedures to other imaging technologies that involve more radiation to the patient and higher cost,” said Robert Atcher,director of the National Isotope Development Centre under the U S Department of Energy.

About 80 per cent of the nuclear medicine procedures rely upon the isotope technetium-99m,which has a “half-life” of just six hours. That means the radioactive substance decays by 50 per cent every six hours until it vanishes,which makes it impossible to stockpile,LiveScience reported.

The global shortage has been attributed to the sudden shutdown of a nuclear reactor in Ontario,Canada,in May 2009.

The reactor produces a third of the world’s medical isotope requirements.

According to the experts,this left a shortfall despite three reactors in Belgium,France and South Africa stepping up their production.

“There still have been times in April,May and July when their schedules were such that there was virtually no material available,” said Atcher.

“There has been a shift to an older isotope for cardiac imaging,but we have exceeded our ability to produce that one as well.”

Supplies became even more strained when the High Flux Reactor in the Netherlands went offline in February 2010,according to Atcher,who presented a report on the shortage at the 240th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society held this week.

The shortage,Atcher said,has already led to bad effects for nuclear medicine beyond physicians turning to older,more expensive procedures.

For instance,many companies that convert the isotopes for medical applications have ceased to be profitable. Nuclear medicine technologists who typically handle the injections isotopes into patients’ bloodstreams and image patients have also suffered cuts in work hours and layoffs.

A radioactive isotope shortage also threatens activities such as environmental research,oil exploration and regulating nuclear proliferation.

For now,rescuing nuclear medicine will require major changes enabled by the Food & Drug Administration (FDA) and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS),according to Atcher.

“We need FDA and CMS to enable the expansion of PET (Positron Emission Tomography) imaging by approving radiopharmaceuticals for use,and to agree to reimburse for studies using new probes that are much more powerful in the information that they provide,” he said.