Isotopes in Medicine

704 Words3 Pages
Isotopes Essay Today I am talking about Isotopes. What are they and how does they influences in medicine. The benefits and the consequences. First of all what are Isotopes. Isotopes are atoms of the same element with different number of neutrons. An isotope has the same atomic number (meaning that has the same number of protons and electrons) but has a different mass number (meaning that it has more neutrons). An example of isotopes is the medical isotopes. Over 10000 hospitals around the world use medical isotopes. Medical isotopes are a small amount of a radioactive essence used to cure diseases. Medical isotopes have been developing through time. Recently they are used to go directly to the infected cells and kill them. The name of this medicine is the internal treatment thought that everything happens inside the body. There are other ways of treatment like the external one but those are not with isotopes. There are two main isotopes used to cure hard diseases like cancer. Actinium 225 and Bismuth 213. These are the main isotopes used in medicine, but the problem is that there are really low quantities of them at our planet, which makes it difficult to use them in medicine. Medical Isotopes can be really good and beneficial to society in the correct use. They can be developed into different medical treatments. Some examples of these are: Brachytherapy that is used for curing different types of cancers and radioimmunotherapy that are isotopes sent to the blood to kill cancerous cells like the leukemia ones. Also it have been discovered that medical isotopes have a good effect on curing cardiovascular diseases. In Europe doctors have been injecting medical isotopes and it have been found that they can kill HIV that are not that developed. Although isotopes are good and benefits in medicine now a day they also have consequences and negative effects on
Open Document