Is nuclear medicine really safe?

Abstract

In nuclear medicine, radiation absorbed dose estimates calculated by standard models at the whole body or organ are very low. At cellular level, however, the heterogeneity of radionuclide distributions of radiation dose patterns may be significant. We present here absorbed doses at cellular level and evaluate their possible impact on the usually assumed risk/benefit relationships in nuclear medicine studies. The absorbed dose values calculated are surprisingly high, and are difficult to interpret. In the present study, we show calculated doses at the cellular level and discuss possible biological consequences, for two radiopharmaceuticals labelled with technetium-99m: human serum albumin microspheres used for pulmonary scintigrapies and HMPAO used to labelled leukocytes.