REVIEW  RAI THERAPY IN ADVANCED DIFFERENTIATED THYROID CANCER: FOCUS ON DOSIMETRY Free access

The Quarterly Journal of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging 2019 September;63(3):253-7

DOI: 10.23736/S1824-4785.19.03196-0

Copyright © 2019 EDIZIONI MINERVA MEDICA

language: English

Advantages of dosimetry in 131I therapy of differentiated thyroid carcinoma

Frederik A. VERBURG ✉

Department of Nuclear Medicine, Marburg University Hospital, Marburg, Germany

For advanced differentiated thyroid carcinoma (DTC) several iodine-131 (131I) activity selection strategies are available. The most common approach empirical activity selection, in which the physician chooses an activity based on convention, experience and patient related parameters. The second available strategy is to perform lesion dosimetry. In this case, the activity to be administered is determined after a pretherapeutic dosimetric assessment to calculate the minimal activity required to achieve an effective absorbed dose or a maximum safe activity based on the delivered blood/bone marrow absorbed dose of 2 Gy as determined by blood and whole-body measurements. In contrast to the situation for lesion-based dosimetry, for the maximum safe activity-based approach several studies on outcome are available. In the present paper, an argument for the use of dosimetry in advanced DTC will be presented.

KEY WORDS: Thyroid neoplasms; In-vivo dosimetry; Iodine-131; Radioisotopes