Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Review
. 2015 Mar;88(1047):20140720.
doi: 10.1259/bjr.20140720. Epub 2015 Jan 9.

Time to demand dosimetry for molecular radiotherapy?

D R McGowan  1 , M J Guy
Affiliations
Review

Time to demand dosimetry for molecular radiotherapy?

D R McGowan et al. Br J Radiol. 2015 Mar.

Abstract

Molecular radiotherapy (MRT) has been used clinically for around 75 years. Despite this long history of clinical use, there is no established dosimetry practice for calculating the absorbed dose delivered to tumour targets or to organs at risk. As a result, treatment protocols have often evolved based on experience with relatively small numbers of patients, each receiving a similar administered activity but, potentially, widely varying doses. This is in stark contrast to modern external-beam radiotherapy practice. This commentary describes some of the barriers to MRT dosimetry and gives some opinions on the way forward.

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
Bell curve showing that treating “as high as safely administered” means that the majority of the patients will be undertreated. Max, maximum.
Figure 2.
Figure 2.
Oxford Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine levels of evidence scale.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. BIR Molecular Radiotherapy Working Party. Molecular radiotherapy in the UK: current status and recommendations for further investigation. London, UK: British Institute of Radiology; 2011.
    1. Deutsch E, Brodack JW, Deutsch KF. Radiation synovectomy revisited. Eur J Nucl Med 1993; 20; 1113–27. - PubMed
    1. Williams JR, Thwaites DI, eds. Radiotherapy physics in practice. 2nd edn. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press; 2000.
    1. Sgouros G, Kolbert KS, Sheikh A, Pentlow KS, Mun EF, Barth A, et al. . Patient-specific dosimetry for 131I thyroid cancer therapy using 124I PET and 3-dimensional-internal dosimetry (3D-ID) software. J Nucl Med 2004; 45: 1366–72. - PubMed
    1. Bodei L, Cremonesi M, Grana C, Rocca P, Bartolomei M, Chinol M, et al. . Receptor radionuclide therapy with 90Y-[DOTA]0-Tyr3-octreotide (90Y-DOTATOC) in neuroendocrine tumours. Eur J Nucl Med Mol Imaging 2004; 31: 1038–46. - PubMed