Isotope shortage forces cancellation of medical tests

Cindy E. Harnett, Times Colonist
A worldwide shortage of medical isotopes used to diagnose cancers and heart problems threatened to cancel more than 200 tests in Victoria next week- but a last minute deal was struck Friday afternoon, lessening the critical impact.
The Vancouver Island Health Authority has just secured an extra supply of medical isotopes allowing doctors to provide another 60 tests and cancel only 140 next week.
Isotopes are injected into patients and light up specific activity in the body which helps doctors diagnose disease. They are not used in diagnostic imaging tests such as CT scans, MRIs, or x-rays.

Each week both Victoria General Hospital and Royal Jubilee Hospital receive one generator of isotopes - each generator serves about 100 patient tests.
With no generators on the horizon, VIHA was set to cancel 200 diagnostic tests next week, but have now secured one generator, about half the size of the regular ones, to eke out a few more tests.
With some economizing and stretching out the supply, Kevin Forkheim, VIHA's medical director of nuclear medicine, estimates he can get another 60 tests in next week.
The shortage could go on another two weeks or two months, he's been told.
"Two weeks without activity is a disaster and two months is just unthinkable," Forkheim said. While working around the clock, his sympathies are with patients, he said.

VIHA's nuclear medicine office will call any patients whose tests will be rescheduled.
VIHA is caught in a global crisis caused this week when Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. announced that the National Research Universal reactor at Chalk River, near Ottawa, which supplies more than two-thirds of the world's supply of raw material used to produce medical isotopes, wouldn't re-open until mid-January.

The Chalk River facility was shutdown for regular maintenance work but extended its inactivity to complete work on the electrical back-up system for regulatory purposes.
The shortage of isotopes caught nuclear medical doctors off guard. Some have called the situation life threatening while cancer groups and patients say the delays are intolerable.
In the House of Commons this week, Health Minister Tony Clement said this week he was "very concerned" about the problem and that work is underway to "resolve the situation."

Source: Times Colonist