Outline And Clarifies The Uses For Developing Cancerous Cells

Introduction

Nuclear Medicine is the technique that involves radioactive substances in treatments and diagnosis. Radioactivity in medicine has been in development for over 50 years; these procedures save thousands of lives and treat millions annually. There are many positive outcomes of radioactive materials used in treatments such as early detection of cancers, heart disease and others but, it’s still questioned today if these practices are unsafe due to the amount of exposure to hazardous radiation, the general population incline to blame radiation in medicine to be a significant contributor for developing cancerous cells in the human body. The following essay will outline and clarifies the uses, benefits and risks associated with the radioisotopes

X-rays passes through the human body and create images of structures such as bones, symptoms of diseases and injuries and some organs.

Radioactive decay (radioactivity) is the course of when a nucleus loses energy from an unstable atom by emitting ionizing radiation. A radioactive material can be emitted of alpha, beta, gamma particles.

Gamma radiation or ‘gamma rays’ are electromagnetic radiation of an extremely high frequency and high energy photons but because of this, gamma rays are ionizing radiation to the human body which can be dangerous.

Positron Emission Tomography (PET) is a nuclear medical imagining device that collects inimitable information in which a radioactive material (radioisotope) is injected into the patient’s body and is then used to detect a variety of health conditions such as many types of cancers, heart diseases and more. After injection by a positron-emitting radioisotope, which is also known as a radioactive tracer, pairs of gamma rays can be detected through the emission indirectly.

Radionuclide is an isotope with an unstable nucleus, also known as a

The methods are non-invasive and are usually completely painless. Depending on the severity of the health condition, recovery time from the x-ray can be fairly quick.

Figure 1.3: Typical Values of Effective Dose for different medical x-rays. Any ionizing radiation can lead to damaging cells. Exposing significant amounts of radiations from x-rays may increase your risk of developing cancerous cells but only in a decade’s period. The risk is very low and is outweighed by the benefits. Referring to Figure 1.x, The radiation dosage from most common used x-rays are below the absorbed range of the natural environment (1.5 – 2.0 mSv) while a CT scan can deliver high dose of radiation up to 10.6 mSv.

Conclusion

To review, nuclear medicine has provided treatment for health conditions that were previously limited to diagnosis. Medical imaging devices (x-rays, SPECT, PET) and the utilized radioactive substances (Technetium-99m and Phosphorus -32) all have common benefits of saving lives through detecting mild to fatal health conditions earlier to start treatment as early as possible while minimizing risk by the patient absorbing insignificant amount of