[ RadSafe ] I-131 Pt and concerns

[franz.schoenhofer at chello.at]

Carol,

My highest esteem for your comment!
I could not imagine that the USA had no legal requirement to inform patients on their treatment nor to inform them on precautions after administration of therapeutic doses of radionuclides. In Austria as well as in the EU it is compulsary to inform patients about precautions to be taken after any radiotherapeutic treatment. They have to be provided with written information and even have to sign that they received the information. Patients have to receive for every treatment written information, have to be informed personally by $I have contributed to an Austrian Standard for release of patients after such treatments.  We also have a standard dealing with releases from hospitals and dealing with contacts to caretakers and family members, which includes babies and breast feeding - absolute no goes within a certain time. Obviously some people do not understand the difference between external radiation an internal one. 

Your clear statement shows, that hospitals and doctors in the USA are legally required to give all necessary information to the patients. Thanks, because this restores my  believe in the correctness in the USA. 

The chance that anti-nuclear lurkers understand the discussion is very low, but still??? The previous comments on RADSAFE are not really useful for a fruitful discussion on radioactivity.

Best wishes,

Franz





 Carol Marcus <csmarcus at ucla.edu> schrieb:
> 
> 
> <www.doseinfo-radar.com/ExposureCalculator.html>
> 
> Tell your friend to tell his friend that if her doctor won't give her 
> written instructions, as required by the CFR, she should get another doctor.
> 
> Carol S. Marcus, Ph.D., M.D.
> Prof. of Radiation Oncology and of Radiological Sciences
> David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA
> 
> On 1/4/2012 10:32 AM, Rees, Brian G wrote:
> > I have a friend, who has a friend that will soon be undergoing I-131 therapy for a metastasized thyroid Ca.  The Pt is a new mother, and went to the www to read about I-131, radiation, etc., and is now convinced she needs to throw away her used clothing, sleep in a different part of the house (the basement), and not have any contact with her baby for a month (among other things)... hopefully she isn't buying over-priced vitamins... but anyway...
> >
> > I did go through the archives, but haven't found any what I would consider to be good, authoritative and informative sources of information regarding post-therapy care and precautions, but don't have time to go through all the archives either (!).  Recommendations?
> >
> > I don't know how much activity they are planning to administer (assuming 100-200 mCi or so), or other details (she's a friend of a friend...), but one thing she is particularly concerned about is holding her baby at some point in an infant carrier (the kind that holds the baby against the chest).  Other than making all kinds of assumptions myself, is there an accessible program that I could use to calculate exposures for after a week, 2 weeks, etc., to help inform the mother of what doses would be, rather than having her full of fear?
> >
> > Yes, I know it's to help the mother, and that an infant thyroid is vulnerable, and that her MD should be making recommendations, and that I'm not an MD, etc., but I sure hate to see a distorted view taken of the potential risks from this procedure.
> >
> > Thanks in advance,
> > Brian Rees, NRRPT, CHP
> >
> >
> >
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--
Franz Schoenhofer, PhD, MinRat
Habicherg. 31/7
A-1160 Vienna
Austria
mobile: ++43 699 1706 1227