X-Ray Technology to Irradiate Blood and Blood Products -Reply

[Martin Gerard Carolan <carolanm@doh.health.nsw.gov.au>]

Fortunately those patients who are sick enough to need a blood transfusion and in particular those who need  irradiated blood usually have a much more reasonable attitude to irradiated blood than do those for whom the consideration of irradiated blood transfusions is purely theoretical. 

With respect to x-ray irradiation of blood -  this is not a new procedure. Blood irradiation  has traditionally been performed with gamma sources, however there are some hospitals like ourselves who use  radiotherapy linear accelerators to perform the irradiations.  Good dosimetry and QA procedures are essential to ensure that all of the blood gets an adequate dose to prevent GVHD in the recipient. The minimum dose required was generally set at about 30Gy (sounds lethal!) (last time I looked at the literature anyway). 

We started using the linacs because we needed to irradiate some of our blood but could not justify an irradiator for the quantities involved. I would be interested to know how wide spread the practice of using linacs for this purpose is. Do many of the hospital people out there follow this practice? 

Martin Carolan
Physicist
Nuclear Medicine Department
Wollongong Hospital
Australia
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