The radiation dose to surgical personnel during intraoperative radioimmunoscintimetry

✍ Scribed by Roland Bares; Berthold Müller; Jürgen Fass; Udalrich Buell; Volker Schumpelick

• Publisher: Springer
• Year: 1992
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 357 KB
• Volume: 19
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0340-6997
• DOI: 10.1007/bf00184125

✦ Synopsis

To estimate the radiation exposure to surgical personnel caused by intraoperative radioimmunoscintimetry, we measured dose rates at different distances from patients who had been injected with 950 MBq technetium-99m-labelled intact carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA)-specific antibodies (Szintimun CEA, Behring AG Marburg, FRG) for immunoscintigraphy 24 h earlier. At 0.05 m (corresponding to working positions during surgery) we found 2.0-16.0 gSv h-1 (average 6.4), which is similar to results for nuclear medicine staff. Thus, if radioimmunoscintimetry is to become a routine procedure, according to national regulations in some countries of the European Communities surgical personnel might be regarded as professionally exposed to radiation.