Re: Radium's Use in Medicine

[John Moulder <jmoulder@post.its.mcw.edu>]

>           Radium brachytherapy sources are still being used in 
>           medicine, in the US and elsewhere. 

Radium brachytherapy (where radium sources are implanted in a tumor or in a 
body cavity around or next to the tumor) is now very rare in the United 
States.  In the mid-1980's most professional societies in the US and Europe 
recommended that radium use be replaced with Iridium-192 (or less commonly 
Cesium-137 or Cobalt-60).  The last major US institution that did radium 
brachytherapy (MD Anderson in Dallas) stopped around 1990.

Clearly some radium sources are still used in smaller places in the US, and 
in much of the rest of the world.

The main biological/medical reason for switching from radium to the other 
isotopes, is that radium produces a radioactive gas when it decays, and the 
other isotopes do not.  The practical reasons for stopping radium use in the 
US, is that for political reasons there is now essentially no way to dispose 
of radium sources, where as the other sources can be shipped back to the 
manufacturer.

The practical reason for using radium is its long half-life.  The sources 
last essentially forever.

John Moulder (jmoulder@its.mcw.edu)
Experimental Radiotherapy Group
Medical College of Wisconsin