With the Chalk River reactor down and out again — some local hospitals are feeling the pinch when it comes to the sudden shortage of medical isotopes.
The Vice President of Patient Services at Collingwood’s Hospital says the sudden shortage will affect a wide range of tests.
Linda McLeod says those include bone scan, and biopsy’s for breast cancer.
She says the Chalk River reactor provided about 75 per cent of the world’s medical isotopes, and it was a real surprise to her when it closed earlier this week.
GE distributes medical isotopes to hospitals, and McLeod says hospitals will be told on a weekly basis, and it’s going to be a day by day process.
She says many of the tests can wait a little longer to be done.
McLeod says this is how shortages are handled each time they occur, so isotopes are rationed out to hospitals, so each one gets some, but perhaps not all the isotopes they need.