Physics Nuclear Physics MDCAT 2012
PMDC Verified Question 86 of 98
A half-life of sodium-24 is ____ which is used to estimate the volume of blood in a patient:
A
6 hours
B
8 hours
C
15 hours
D
15 days
Tap any option to test your recall and reveal the step-by-step Propolis autopsy.

Propolis Cognitive Error Autopsy

Official Correct Choice:
Option C: 15 hours


Concept:

Sodium-24 (\(^{24}\text{Na}\)) is an artificially produced radioactive isotope commonly used as a medical tracer, specifically to study blood circulation and estimate total blood volume.

Solution:

  • It is a factual standard that the physical half-life of Sodium-24 is approximately 15 hours.


  • This timeframe is short enough to minimize prolonged radiation exposure to the patient, but long enough to conduct the medical procedure.


Why other options are incorrect:

These are incorrect memorization distractors. For comparison, Iodine-131 has a half-life of 8 days, and Technetium-99m is roughly 6 hours.

Quality & Fidelity Assurance: Every question on BeambePrep is rigorously curated against the official PMDC syllabus with zero filler, zero out-of-syllabus content, and zero typos. When an authentic past paper originally contained a historical mistake or ambiguity from the examining board (such as UHS or NUMS), BeambePrep faithfully reflects the original paper while detailing the nuance and scientific consensus in the autopsy above.

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