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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

Lucerno announced that the Fiscal Year 2021 Omnibus Appropriations Act includes critical language to protect the safety of nuclear medicine patients and enhance transparency within the American healthcare system. Press Release

“Reproducible, quantitative standardized uptake value (SUV) results from FDG-PET scans are increasingly viewed as important in clinical oncology—both in routine clinical practice, as well as in clinical trials.” Full Text

“The studies in which I have been involved identified factors such as the tools used for the injection, the technique, and the experience of the technologist that influence the probability of extravasation, rather than any patient-specific factor.” Full Text

“As part of routine monitoring of 18F-FDG PET administrations, an interesting case was identified that mimicked extravasation but represented dose leakage during infusion via an automatic injector. The Lara device provided a useful tool for more timely critical evaluation and problem solving, extending advantages to the patient and practice.” Full Text

Lucerno announced that Fiscal Year 2021 bills advanced this week by the House Appropriations Committee to the House floor include critical language to protect the safety of nuclear medicine patients and enhance transparency within the American healthcare system. Press Release