I-131 Therapies - Part Two

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

1.  Dale's comment on an "emergency" therapy (i.e., so stat that they
couldn't wait for the room prep) reminds me of a complication that
came up every now and then.  Occassionally you really did have
problems with an I-131 patient having cardiac difficulties.  This
meant transferring the patient to the CCU where another prep area
had to be set up since not all of our in-patient rooms had telemetry
available!  This should have been forcastable in most cases--but
I learned the hard way to integrogate the refering physician for
medical complications (probability of) the hard way (and got a
follow-up opinion from the internist on the ward)!  Of course, some
of these problems can be solved by having dedicated rooms with
built in shielding and full telemetry, too bad there isn't an
unlimited amount of money for such things!

2.  Not quite as bad as Dale's elemental iodine, but still a major
hassle (and potentially dangerous for the patient).
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The opions expressed above are those of the author alone and do not
not represent those of the Stanford University or the US Department
of Energy.
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