The urgent need for protective shielding for personnel who administer radiopharmaceuticals

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Author Info

James Robert Brašić

Corresponding Author

James Robert Brašić
Section of High-Resolution Brain Positron Emission Tomography Imaging, Division of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging, The Russell H. Morgan Department of Radiology and Radiological Science, The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Johns Hopkins Outpatient Center, Baltimore Maryland, USA

A B S T R A C T

Traditional practices to administer radiopharmaceuticals to patients for positron emission tomography involve exposure to ionizing radiation. Techniques developed to reduce radiation exposure to personnel who inject radiopharmaceuticals may be considered unnecessary by experienced nuclear medicine personnel. A 69-year-old male nuclear medicine attending developed bilateral cataracts after 18 years of regular administration of radiopharmaceuticals. Although protective shielding was not used for the first 14 years of his practice, it was uniformly applied for the subsequent 4 years. Nuclear medicine personnel are advised to use protective shielding and to design work improvement procedures to minimize radiation exposure for staff and patients.

Article Info

Article Type

Research Article

Publication history

Received: Thu 23, May 2019
Accepted: Fri 14, Jun 2019
Published: Wed 26, Jun 2019

Copyright

© 2023 James Robert Brašić. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Hosting by Science Repository.
DOI: 10.31487/j.RDI.2019.03.06