Medical Uses
Technetium, aside from its dangerous properties and deadly radioactivity, is used for many medical purposes. One of these purposes is the Technetium-99m Generator.
Technetium-99m, a man made element and a type of technetium isotope, has been used as a radioisotope since 1958. Since all isotopes of technetium are radioactive so is technetium-99m. The radioisotope is used to diagnose diseased organs. The injection of the technetium-99m isotope gives off a certain type of radiation which show doctors which areas of the organ is diseased without causing radiation damage to the patient. The half life of the isotope is very short, 6 hours, this way the patient will not be long with the operation. The isotope is mixed with another, molybdenum-99, which has a larger half life of 66 hours, which allowed it to be transported over long distances.
Technetium-99m is used is used in many cases. It is more widely used, over 20 million already, to do bone scans, kidney scans, heart scans, and lung scans. More that 85% of these kinds of imaging procedures use this particular type of technetium isotope. The first people to develop the technetium-99m generator were Walter Tucker and Margaret Greene. Then Powell Richards and the team then continued then continued refining the generator. Richards was in charge of the radioisotope production, he later realized how useful the technetium-99m generator is going to be.
Still today, scientists are still finding new uses for the radioisotope. Recently, doctors have been able to use the generator to locate the infected areas in the lymph nodes for breast cancer, after they locate it, the can make the incision precisely.
Walter Tucker and Powell Richards