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Our findings suggest that active monitoring and the associated display of results are critical to quality improvement efforts to reduce and sustain radiopharmaceutical extravasation rates. Full Text

From the patient perspective, transparency regarding extravasations is essential to improving care, ensuring radiation protection, reducing health inequities, and untangling the deeply disturbing and irregular relationship between the nuclear medicine community and their regulating body, The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Full Text

Lucerno informed the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) that a key document used to develop the patient injury reporting criterion did not meet NRC’s requirements for information quality. Asks NRC to immediately issue Interim Staff Guidance. Press Release

Steps can be taken by radiation protection personnel at medical institutions to educate practitioners and staff about extravasations, their risks and what steps can be taken to reduce their occurrence. Further research needs to be performed to better understand the incidence rate, categorization, causes, and methods of prevention. Full text

U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission accepts Lucerno’s petition for rulemaking and directs the commencement of a rulemaking process to close an outdated loophole in nuclear medicine safety regulations. Press Release

Accurate extravasation dosimetry requires characterization of the event. In this work, we developed three extravasation characterization and dosimetry tools, validated each against published data, and demonstrated their utility in a realistic clinical workflow. Full Text

The topical detector binary classifier, calibrated using quantitative static PET measurements, significantly improves extravasation detection compared to qualitative image analysis. Full Text

Lucerno announced that Fiscal Year 2023 bills passed this week by the U.S. House of Representatives include critical language to improve the safety of nuclear medicine treatments and increase transparency within the American healthcare system. Press Release

In 2020 the Health Physics Society (HPS) submitted a public comment, unsupported by science, to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission regarding the reporting of extravasations. In early 2022, the radiation protection journal, Health Physics, provided a forum for discussing the HPS public comment. Lucerno, patients, experts, and HPS members provided written responses to the HPS public comment.

Lucerno announces Fiscal Year 2022 Omnibus Appropriations Act preserves critical language to protect the safety of nuclear medicine patients and enhance transparency within the American healthcare system. Then attach the press release below for full text. Press Release

“My analysis shows that the NRC findings predominantly parrot positions of the advisory committee and affiliated societies, such as requiring patients to determine whether a procedure was done correctly; requiring reporting only if a patient experiences permanent functional damage; or taking no action whatsoever.” Full Text

Dr. David W. Townsend, co-inventor of the PET/CT scanner, discusses how extravasation affects standardized uptake values and treatment assessment and why extravasations often go undetected. Dr. Townsend believes that monitoring the quality of injection is as important as monitoring all other aspects of the imaging process. Watch full video here