Abstract
The practitioner of pediatric nuclear medicine should have some knowledge of radiation effects and the potential hazards that may result from low-level radiation exposures. There are several reasons such knowledge is essential. First, specialists should assure themselves that the exposure of patients to doses from diagnostic or therapeutic procedures is not excessive. Although all current radiopharmaceuticals deliver radiation doses within a readily acceptable range, such was not the case 30 years ago when the radionuclides employed were generally longer-lived and emitted significant particulate radiation, e.g., iodine-131, strontium-85. As a result, before 1970 at The Children’s Hospital in Boston, radionuclides were administered only to patients with advanced neoplastic diseases. Even today, with the introduction of each new agent it is imperative to understand the kinetics of distribution and the radiation doses delivered to various organs.
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Adelstein, S.J. (1995). Radiation Risk. In: Treves, S.T. (eds) Pediatric Nuclear Medicine. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-4205-3_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-4205-3_3
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