Guest guest Posted August 24, 2008 Report Share Posted August 24, 2008 Hi All, Jeanetta asked me to come up with a math question pertaining to nukes. I know that most of you measure drugs in grams and milligrams. We measure most everything in Curies and millicuries. The math is pretty much the same-just substitute mci for mg. Ok, I have a concentration of technetium reading 600mci in 1ml at 0100. I want 70 mci in a TOTAL volume of 10ml at 0700. What is the volume of technetium I need at 0700? Tech has a half life (T1/2) of 6 hours. So, from 0100 to 0700, I've lost half my activity-i.e., I now have 300mci in 1 ml. (600mci X 0.5=300mci). Therefore, 1ml divided by 300=0.0033333 muliplied by xml over 70mci=0.23 ml of technetium. I WANT a total of 10 ml. So, I add 9.77 ml of 0.9% NS. (Normal saline is added to all " cold " reagents, since the final product will be injected into the patient.) This is just a small example of what we do. All radioactive nuclides decay at different rates. Technetium decays at a rate of about 10%/hour. This is where you need to know decay factors or constants. Once you've established the rate of decay, the rest is easy. Hope this gives a little insight into my world. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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