Extremity exposure in nuclear medicine therapy with 90Y-labelled substances – Results of the ORAMED project

A. Rimpler, I. Barth, Paolo Ferrari, Sebastien Baechler, Adela Carnicer, Laurent Donadille, M. Fulop, Mercè Ginjaume, M. Mariotti, Marta Sans-Mercé, G. Gualdrini, Sabah Krim, Xavier Ortega, Natasha Ruiz, Filip Vanhavere

    Research outputpeer-review

    Abstract

    90Y-labelled radiopharmaceuticals offer promising prospects for radionuclide therapies of tumours, e.g. radioimmunotherapies (RIT), (EANM, 2007), peptide receptor radiotherapies (PRRT), (Otte et al., 1998), and selective internal radiotherapies (SIRT), (Salem and Thurston, 2006). 90Y, an almost pure high-energy beta radiation emitter (Eβ,max = 2.28 MeV), is a favourable radionuclide for therapeutic purposes. However, when preparing and performing these therapies, high activities of 90Y (>1 GBq) are to be manipulated and technicians, physicians and nurses may receive high skin exposures to the hands. If radiation protection standards are low, the exposure of staff can exceed the annual skin dose limit of 500 mSv. Within a particular work package (WP4) of the ORAMED project, comprehensive measurements in nuclear medicine departments of several hospitals in 6 European countries were carried out. The study focussed on 90Y-labelled substances such as Zevalin® and DOTATOC to achieve a representative database on staff exposure. This paper summarises the most important results and conclusions for individual monitoring of skin exposure of staff.
    Original languageEnglish
    Pages (from-to)1283-1286
    JournalRadiation Measurements
    Volume46
    Issue number11
    DOIs
    StatePublished - Nov 2011

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