Development of Courses for Nuclear Chemical Engineering Education: Review of Radioisotopes Used in Medicine

Radioisotopes are an important part of modern medicine and are likely to play a larger role in some areas of medicine in the future. There are many factors that go into the selection of radioisotopes for medical practices: radioactive dose, time of exposure, chemistry, and half-life of the isotope. A review of radioisotopes in the medical field was done in preparation for a new undergraduate general education course, entitled, “Discovery and Uses of Radioactive Materials.” The course aims to educate students about the opportunities, advantages, and disadvantages of using radioactive materials in everyday life, energy, medicine, defense, and science. For the medical applications literature review, articles and secondary resources were identified using Google Scholar, PubMed, Mayo Clinic, and then references within those resources. The medical field uses short-lived isotopes for imaging, diagnosis, and treatment of many different medical conditions such as cancer, chronic heart failure, and rheumatoid arthritis. Among the types of treatments using radioisotopes are external beam radiation therapy, brachytherapy, radiopharmaceuticals, targeted alpha therapy, radioembolization, and radio-synovectomy. There are many advancements being made in the field of radiation medicine that will affect how disease is treated in the future.