Global Molybdenum-99 Shortage: Basic Facts and Possible Alternatives.

Abstract

Nuclear medicine is the functional imagining modality which employs use of tracer quantity of short lived isotopes (half lives from few minutes to hours) to have enormous information at cellular or molecular levels. About seventy thousands nuclear medicine procedures are performed daily globally and interesting 50% are done in USA. Technetium-99m (Tc-99m) is used in more than 90% of nuclear medicine studies due to its favorable physical characteristics like 6 hr half life, photopeak of 140 KeV and round the clock availability. It is the daughter product of Molybdenum-99 (Mo-99) having a half of 66 hr and is supplied in the form of generator (Mo-Tc Generator) on a weekly basis.