Isotope supply crash drives push for new moly sources

June 3, 2008 Diagnostic Imaging. Isotope supply crash drives push for new moly sources Political bickering, engineering incompetence, and benign neglect make a mess of North American medical isotope supply system James Brice -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Knowledgeable Canadians considered the molybdenum-99 crisis of 2007 a national disgrace. A squabble between the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission and Atomic Energy Canada, the federal corporation that owns and operates nuclear research facilities at Chalk River, ON, forced the National Research Universal reactor there to shut down. That action triggered a crisis that cut off production of molybdenum-99, the isotope that produces technetium-99m for thousands of health facilities across Canada and the U.S. For Dr. Christopher O'Brien, past president of the Canadian Society of Nuclear Medicine, the crisis was very nearly a matter of life and death for two of his patients. Emergency nuclear medicine diagnostic services were cut off to two patients under O'Brien's care. Both were in renal failure. One had a suspected pulmonary embolism, and the other had suspected bleeding in the intestinal tract. Neither could be examined with CT because of known allergy to x-ray contrast media. The situation left physicians blind to whether the patients' conditions were actually life-threatening. Physicians held their breaths, and both patients survived.

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