Re: Radium's Use in Medicine

["Michael P. Grissom" <MIKEG%SLACVM.bitnet@vmd.cso.uiuc.edu>]

Forwarded-from: MIKEG

1.  I would add, however, that the higher energy photons yielded by
radium that were of little or no radiotherapeutic benefit tended to
create more hospital radsafe problems and higher extremity doses for
brachytherapy support staff than Ir-192 and Cs-137 in intracavitary
and interstitial therapies.  Which is not to say there still aren't
plenty of these kinds of problems in modern HDR brachy, the use of
higher activity sources, etc.  Much of the real reason for the
extended persistence of radium-226 in  brachytherapy were the well
defined Edith Q. tables for describing expected therapeutic benefit
through well defined dose distributions that generally WORKED in the
experience of many therapeutic radiologists.


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From: John Moulder <jmoulder@post.its.mcw.edu>
To: Multiple recipients of list <radsafe@romulus.ehs.uiuc.edu>
Subject: Re: Radium's Use in Medicine
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X-Comment:  Radiation Safety Distribution List

>           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