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“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

Dr. Marjan Boerma, radiation biologist and professor at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, discusses radiation injury to tissue and why each individual responds differently to the same dose of radiation. She comments on a specific case in which the patient has received a severe injury to the tissue from radiation, explaining what exactly happened to the cells and what should be done for helping to heal the tissue. Dr. Boerma believes that the patients with large extravasations should be followed clinically since there is a high chance of long-term effects. Watch full video here

Dr. Jackson Kiser, Chief of Molecular Imaging Department at Carilion Clinic, explains why complete delivery of the radiopharmaceutical is so important not only for PET/CT studies but for all nuclear medicine procedures. He provides several specific examples from his practice of how extravasation can result in misinterpretation of medical images and affect patient care. Dr. Kiser also shares his opinion on why monitoring extravasations and clinically following extravasated patients will become even more important for the rapidly growing field of radiotherapeutics. Watch full video here

“This case describes how detection of excess presence of 99mTc-MDP near the injection site enabled the technologist to apply mitigation tactics early in the uptake process. It also suggests that detecting an extravasation or stasis early in the injection process can be important for image interpretation and minimizing radiation dose to tissue.” Full Text

Lucerno has entered into a Master Resellers Agreement to add its Lara^® System to the Siemens Healthineers portfolio of medical imaging products. With this agreement, Siemens Healthineers becomes Lucerno’s first United States partner reseller and makes the Lara^® System available to nuclear medicine customers nationwide. Press Release

“Our findings suggest that significant extravasations can or have caused patient harm and can irradiate patients’ tissue with doses that exceed medical event reporting limits and deterministic effect thresholds. Therefore, diagnostic radiopharmaceutical injections should be monitored, and dosimetry of extravasated tissue should be performed in certain cases where thresholds are thought to have been exceeded. Process improvement efforts should be implemented to reduce the frequency of extravasation in nuclear medicine.” Full Text

Dr. David Townsend, the co-inventor of PET/CT scanner, Dr. Jackson Kiser, Medical Director of Molecular Imaging at Carilion Clinic, Dr. Darrell Fisher, nuclear medicine physicist, past president Health Physics Society, and previous member of the NRC’s Advisory Committee on the Medical Uses of Isotopes (ACMUI), Dr. Marjan Boerma, the director of the UAMS Division of Radiation Health, and others shared research on extravasations. You can watch the webinar and earn 1 CE credit here.

A panel discussion focusing on how radiopharmaceutical extravasation affects the quality and quantification of nuclear medicine imaging studies. Watch full video here

“With patient radiation safety in mind, we maintain that both diagnostic and therapeutic extravasation events should be identified and characterized. Severe extravasations affect the diagnostic or therapeutic quality of nuclear medicine procedures, and the unintended dose to tissue and skin may eventually be clinically significant. A dedicated radiopharmaceutical injection monitoring system can be used to improve the accuracy of dosimetry and assist in determining the need for patient follow-up.” Full Text

Lucerno highlighted a peer-reviewed publication in the radiation safety journal Health Physics demonstrating that extravasations of routinely-used radiopharmaceuticals can cause unintended irradiation to patient tissue that “exceed well-established radiation protection and regulatory limits.” Press Release

“Partial extravasation of a PET dose is readily detected and differentiated using TAC metrics and these metrics could provide deeper insight into the impact of partial extravasation on image quality or quantitation.” Full Text