Question

the medical use of radioactivity that is known as isotope-scanning, is often considered as being extreme…

What are the dangers of this procedure? Do the pros outweigh the cons?

And what is the chemistry behind this process? Please answer in greater than 200 words

Answer 1

The medical usage of radioactivity has been a procedure employed for the detetction and very effective treatment of a large number of life threatening diseases known in the human body. The major disadvantages of using isotope-scanning in medical application is damage of tissues over prolonged exposures or damage due to number of times of exposure of the tissues or of the bone scanning. It may also cause skin burns by damage of tissues, nauseas in many cases and lung cancer are well known side effects of radioactivity use in medicine. All these conditions specially damage of tissues and burning of skin may cause eventual death. In many organisms they may also end up causing genetic mutations. Apart from all these facts, the use of radioactive isotopic techniques in medical facilities are very expensive and are rarely found and managed by all hospitals. The radioisotopes also need to be stored well, since it releases active radiations continuosly over periods of time. However, ever since the radioacitivity techniques have been employed in the field of medicine, its been a favorable method for the fast identification of bone damages, in case of X-rays and computerised tomography also known as CT scan for entire body scanning or specific body scans inclusing brain. They are quick and very accurate in identification of disease areas in the body. The pros of the use of radioisotopes in scanning as a tool for medical applications thus outweighs the cons of using radioisotopes in medical use.