Nuclear pharmacy

Nuclear pharmacy, also known as radiopharmacy, involves preparation of radioactive materials for patient administration that will be used to diagnose and treat specific diseases in nuclear medicine. It generally involves the practice of combining a radionuclide tracer with a pharmaceutical component that determines the biological localization in the patient.Radiopharmaceuticals are generally not designed to have a therapeutic effect themselves, but there is a risk to staff from radiation exposure and to patients from possible contamination in production. Due to these intersecting risks, nuclear pharmacy is a heavily regulated field. The majority of diagnostic nuclear medicine investigations are performed using Technetium-99m.

The concept of nuclear pharmacy was first described in 1960 by Captain William H. Briner while at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Maryland. Along with Mr. Briner, John E. Christian, who was a professor in the School of Pharmacy at Purdue University, had written articles and contributed in other ways to set the stage of nuclear pharmacy. William Briner started the NIH Radiopharmacy in 1958. John Christian and William Briner were both active on key national committees responsible for the development, regulation and utilization of radiopharmaceuticals. A Technitium-99m (a radionuclide) generator was commercially available, followed by the availability of a number of Tc-99m based radiopharmaceuticals.

In the United States nuclear pharmacy was the first pharmacy specialty established in 1978 by the Board of Pharmacy Specialties.

Various models of production exist internationally. Institutional nuclear pharmacy is typically operated through large medical centers or hospitals while commercial centralized nuclear pharmacies provide their services to subscriber hospitals. They prepare and dispense radiopharmaceuticals as unit doses that are then delivered to the subscriber hospital by nuclear pharmacy personnel.

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