Medical Treatment Could Trigger Alarms

Patients undergoing radiation procedures may not know they could trigger public safety radiation alarms, a U.S. study advises.

The study, published in the Journal of Nuclear Medicine, said healthcare providers provide patients with adequate information about nuclear medicine procedures, but concluded there is room for improvement.

Patients undergoing diagnostic procedures are less likely than patients undergoing therapeutic procedures to be informed that they could activate radiation alarms in public places, study co-author Armin Ansari of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta said in a statement.

The study, conducted in collaboration with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, interviewed 89 healthcare professionals and looked at patient release procedures and practices among 66 healthcare facilities in 12 states. Participating facilities perform a range of diagnostic and therapeutic procedures including cardiac stress tests; positron emission tomography, or PET, bone, lung and renal scans; thyroid uptake studies; whole body scans and I-131 hyperthyroid treatments.

Twenty million nuclear medicine procedures are performed each year to detect, evaluate and treat diseases, using radiopharmaceuticals to treat overactive thyroids and some cancers.