December 2007 - Posts

My New Years Resolution—Drink More Milk
December 31, 2007 10:31 AM by Joyce Ward

The other day I had a bone density test done to check and see if these old bones were strong enough that I did not have to worry about breaking a hip from an icy fall. The results were that I had osteopenia but not yet osteoporosis; therefore, my New Read More...

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Ghosts of Christmases Past
December 26, 2007 12:57 PM by Joyce Ward

I spent Christmas at my daughter's house and, as usual, we had way too many presents and too much to eat. The impact of progress is never more apparent when comparing the presents I got as a girl and those I bought for my daughter, with those my grandchildren Read More...

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An Early Christmas Present
December 21, 2007 11:41 AM by Joyce Ward

It looked like the Scrooge of this Christmas, at least for nuclear medicine technologists, was going be Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, which shut down the National Research Universal (NRU) reactor at Chalk River (Canada) that supplies the molybdenum Read More...

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Is Medicare Penny Wise and Pound Foolish?
December 19, 2007 11:17 AM by Joyce Ward

The recent news about Medicare cuts for the radioimmunotherapy (RIT) agents I-131 Bexxar and Y-90 Zevalin reminded me of the English proverb about being penny wise and pound (dollar) foolish. The latest report on this was published on the website of the Read More...

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Canadian Parliament Rides to the Rescue
December 13, 2007 11:46 AM by Joyce Ward

There may be light at the end of tunnel for the nuclear medicine departments currently coping with the shortage of Tc-99m caused by the shutdown of Chalk River Reactor and the subsequent loss of the major supply of the molybdenum for the generators used Read More...

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Coping with an Isotope Shortage?
December 10, 2007 8:50 AM by Joyce Ward

Looking at the news on the SNM website http://interactive.snm.org/ I noticed that the return to service of MDS Nordion's Canadian reactor, which produces most of the company's--and indeed a large portion of the world's--molybdenum supply, has been extended Read More...

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So Where Are We Going?
December 4, 2007 2:35 PM by Joyce Ward

When I graduated from my nuclear medicine training in 1984, PET was confined to a few academic institutions where it was used as a research tool, and nuclear medicine was the only clinically available method for non-invasively imaging molecular processes. Read More...

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