University Publications

Abstract Radiochemical purity determines the biodistribution of free Tc99m pertechnetate and Tc99m radiopharmaceuticals. The radiochemical impurities in free Tc99m pertechnetate is the hydrolyzed Tc99m, while the radiochemical impurities in Tc99m labeled radiopharmaceuticals are free Tc99m pertechnetate and hydrolyzed Tc99m. The impact of these impurities includes poor image quality which leads to wrong diagnosis and also gives unnecessary radiation dose to the patient. The objective of this study was to find out the influence of storage temperature on radiochemical purity of Tc99m pertechnetate and Tc99m radiopharmaceuticals. 65 Samples of free Tc99m pertechnetate and Tc99m radiopharmaceuticals were utilized for radiochemical purity determination at storage temperature from 25 C0- 29 C0 by the chromatography method which is consist from mobile phase and ITLC strips as stationary phase. The mean radiochemical purity resulted was 98.2% with STD 0.7 for all samples. Radiochemical purity of free Tc99m pertechnetate and Tc99m radiopharmaceuticals remains stable in 95.4% of the samples and 4.6% of the samples were out of the internationally acceptable limit. This may be attributed neither to temperature nor to the designed storage period. It is recommended that, follow up of quality assurance protocol including double check should be implemented