Comparison of Radioactivity Measurement with Radionuclide Calibrators in Nuclear Medicine Centers / 의학물리

To acquire good image quality and to minimize unnecessary radiation dose to patients, it is important to ensure that the radiopharmaceutical administered is accurately measured. Quality control of radionuclide calibrators should be performed to achieve these goals. The purpose of this study is to support the quality control of radionuclide calibrators in nuclear medicine centers and to investigate the level of measurement accuracy of the radionuclide calibrators. 58 radionuclide calibrators from 45 nuclear medicine centers, 74 radionuclide calibrators from 58 nuclear medicine centers, and 60 radionuclide calibrators from 45 nuclear medicine centers were tested with I-131, Tc-99m and I-123, respectively. The results showed that 81% of calibrators for I-131, 61% of calibrators for Tc-99m and 67% of calibrators for I-123 were within +/-5%. 17% of calibrators for I-131, 20% of calibrators for Tc-99m and 15% of calibrators for I-123 had a deviation in the range 5%10%. Follow-up measurements were performed on the calibrators whose error exceeded the +/-10% limit. As a result, some of the calibrator showed an improvement and their deviation decreased below the +/-10% limit. The results have shown that such comparisons are necessary to improve the accuracy of the measurement and to identify malfunctioning radionuclide calibrators.

Prevalence of HCV infection in pregnant women and vertical transmission / 대한산부인과학회잡지

OBJECTIVE: The HCV seroprevalence rate and the vertical transmission rate in Korean pregnancy women have not been determined until now. The purpose of this study is to estimate the prevalence of anti- HCV in pregnant women and vertical transmission rate to assess the role of antenatal screening of HCV and the necessity of following babies from anti-HCV positive mothers. METHODS: We reviewed the medical records of 21,639 patients who delivered at Ilsin Christian hospital from January 2000 to October 2003. The HbsAg, HbsAb, anti-HCV, HIV test were performed in their 1st trimester of pregnancy and the HCV RNA test was performed by RT-PCR in samples positive for anti-HCV. 38 babies born to anti-HCV positive mothers were tested for anti-HCV and those who were positive anti-HCV were also tested for HCV RNA by PCR. RESULTS: The positive rate of anti-HCV in pregnant women was 0.42% (90/21,639) and that of HCV RNA was 57% (51/90). The positive rate of anti-HCV was 26.3% (10/38) and the result of HCV RNA test was all negative in babies whose mothes were positive for anti-HCV. CONCLUSION: The prevalence of anti-HCV in pregnant women who delivered at our hospital seems to be higher than that in the Korean young adult man and it is similar with the whole world prevalence rate. The prevalence of anti-HCV of babies born to HCV PCR positive mothers was higher than that born to HCV PCR negative mothers. None of anti-HCV positive babies was HCV RNA positive. With this, we conclude that the vertical transmission as the transmission route of HCV infection is negligible but routine screening for HCV is acceptable to pregnant women.