h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Entry: Nuclear Medicine - Basic - A3762678
Author: EnsignPhil - U1291644

This is an entry about what I do! I hope it is a nice general introduction into Nuclear Medicine

Just bookmarking, to return later.

Only read the first liner so far, but:

The process of imaging, genrally, brakes down like this. > The process of imaging, genErally, BREAKS down like this.

May be a good idea to run it through a spell checker, then look through manually for homonyms like 'brakes' vs 'breaks'

"A radioactive isotope (most often Technetium 99m (Tc99m)) is attached to a phamacutical" > pharmacEtical (this seems to be spelled incorrectly throughout.

Also, for Tc99 > 99Tc. (I suspect that the ‘m’ you are using is superfluous. I’ve never seen this before; is it a convention peculiar to nuclear medicine, or are you just indicating that ’99 is the mass number?)

the 99's I was using above were supposed to be in superscript. I copied and pasted my message from 'Word', but h2g2 didn't recognise it.

Just realisetoo that the Entry is somwhat short. Haven't loojked at your parallel Entry yet, maybe theyshould be combined?

nessesary > necessary

Just noticed that even I got this wrong:

"phamacutical" > pharmacEtical" >> pharmacEUtical

Having seen both entries, it's definitely my opinion that they should be combined. They're both sort of shortish, and so with the addition of a header or two it would be very easy just to separate the two slightly different bits within one entry.

the m indicates 'metastable' that probable needs an explenation in its self

Yes, true.

I have Edited this article based on the advice here. I have combined it with Nuclear Medicine - Gamma Camera to make a more comprehensive article.
Are there any more Ideas?

Well, I haven't read your revised version in detail yet (I'm trying to escape from my computer to ewrtite tomorrow's lessons!), but

1. I would suggest explaining the nomenclature of 99m Tc in a 'footnote'.

2. Explain IV in a footnote

i.e. Encode it like this:

The symbol 99m Tc means that it is a metastable isotope of mass number 99. The term 'metastable means... (I would miss out all the stuff you wrote about 'Anyone familiar with... . Just stick to the facts



IV means intra-venous </FOOTNOTE

Oops , I stiil wasn't sufficiently clear about where to add the 'footnotes' coding.

Like this:

A radioactive isotope (most often Technetium 99m (99mTc)The symbol 99m Tc means that it is a metastable isotope of mass number 99. The term 'metastable means... is attached...

Hello.

Nice topic! I have a few succint comments (I'll be short and to the point, OK?)

I think the title is not suiting the contents. Under 'nuclear medicine' I would have expected (a lot) more than Tc-imaging. (A re-titling to something in the lines of 'Tc99m Imaging in Medicine' would be in order I think).

The sentence "Its half life of 6 hours is long enough to allow practical imaging but not so long that the patient, public and environiment are over burdened with radiation" makes it all sound too harmless. Tc99m decays to Tc99 which decays under beta radiation to Ru98 (t0.5 is 200ky). Beta radiation is harmful. While contamination with radionuclides can be kept at a minimum using Tc it is still a problem.

I think you should mention the "Tc99 cows". A reader might ask, if Tc99m's half-life is 6h, how is it produced then? Answer: Tc99m is produced from Mo99 (via beta decay) which is a waste product of nuclear power plants. Mo99 is extracted from the radioactive waste and shipped in solution to hospitals (and radionuclide industry). Now Mo99 has a t0.5 of 60h, so that Tc99m is constantly being produced in the solution. Tc99m is then freshly, chemically extracted from a Mo99 solution and injected into the patient.

So much for now. This is an interesting topic, as I said. Please do not get demotivated by my comments above.

HELL

Seeing as EnsignPhil appears to have Elvised, I propose a move to... somewhere... how about the Flea Market?

I haven't lord lucaned, But i think I need to do a complete re-write and don't have the time at the moment.

I would also like to point out that I was trying to keep this entry short, ie NOT the size of a text book (you know the ones horibble to read but make great door stops).

The majour references to Tc are ment as an example, I should however probaly make this clear and mention other Isotopes but Tc is the most commonly used.

I haven't mentioned "Tc Cows" because I feel that would open up a whole new raft of questions.
I could probably find some external references to put in. I know that sound lazy but I think this article could easily become unwhealdy.

I think this article is nearly there now. I would like to here any more comments you have.

Hi... This Entry is really gettin' better! Nearly there...

A few succint and to-the-point comments, OK?

1)

Three main fields of application... "Firstly it can be therapeutic and secondly non-imaging tests. The bulk of the work for most Nuclear Medicine departments is imaging."

The enumeration sounds better if you turn it around (IMO): "Firstly, the bulk of the work...is imaging, secondly therapeutic (cancer treatment) and thirdly non-imaging tests (dosage determination)" (suggestion: Specify that you will describe all three of them in more detail below - that keeps the reader on track)

2)

"A radioactive isotope (most often Technetium 99m (99mTc))1is attached to a pharmaceutical." I think it is more difficult to attach Tc to a pharmacon than it would be to attach S-35 or P-32 (in Biochemical imaging S and P are often used to image proteins or nucleotides)...


3)

Now that you have reshaped this Entry it seems that the extra paragraph on 99Tc is superfluous. (But this is just my humble opinion)

Good work

Dr. HELL

1) Ok, good point
2)It may be easier to attach S and P, but in Nuc Med Tc is the most commonly used so I'll leave it how it is.
3)The paragraph on Tc can stay as It delivers just a little more info, But Idealy I would like to put it in some some sort of box or side bar. Is this possible?

Can some one please proof read for spelling and grammer as I know mine is rubbish.

Just copy and paste the text into a word-processor and run the spell-checker!