What is the importance of halflife when a radiactive medicine is pushed through vain to kill cancer cells?
2006-08-05 00:19:08 · 4 answers · asked by sup 3 in Science & Mathematics ➔ Medicine
First of all, it gives you an idea of how fast you have to have the isotope delivered.
Second, it gives you an idea of how long it's going to hang around, once it reaches its target.
Third, it gives you the ability to compute how much of a radiation dose the other areas are likely to get from the dose delivered.
And of course, it gives you information on how much of the isotope is likely to live long enough to be excreted by whatever route it is excreted, so you know whether it's necessary to hold the individual's wastes (and for how long) before they're not significantly radioactive.
Those are the basics. There's a lot more about this than just the half-life, though... There's information about how the stuff is distributed and metabolized and excreted and all that. Fun--if you happen to like math.
2006-08-05 05:47:38 · answer #1 · answered by gandalf 4 · 1⤊ 0⤋
The half life of a radioactive isotope is the time it takes for half of the sample to have decayed away. If the isotope would have a half life of 10 minutes and it would take also 10 minutes after ingestion to arrive at it's destination, than only half of the sample would still be present as the original isotope.
2006-08-05 00:52:20 · answer #2 · answered by cordefr 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
There is also the issue of blood brain barrier opening (unwanted) and extravasation...
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2006-08-07 15:15:27 · answer #3 · answered by hallitubevolunteer1 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
What's half life?
2006-08-08 23:52:34 · answer #4 · answered by JBWPLGCSE 5 · 0⤊ 1⤋