Radiotherapy & Haemodialysis

[Simon Brooke]

One of our HD patients is about to have Radiotherapy.
We have been informed that the patients blood will be radioactive for about 8 days after that, and special radioprotection measures need to be adopted when handling blood and body fluids after this agent is administered.

Does anyone have any experience of this or ideas what measures should be taken?

[Ian Wilde]

Hi Simon, we had something similar at the Christie some years ago where a patient had a radioactive dose (can’t remember what of at the moment) but I do remember the nurse had to dialysis while stood behind a lead screen on wheels! We set up the machine in a side room of the cancer centre with the drain going down a toilet via a bespoke connection into the pan that fitted under the toilet seat. The half life of whatever was used sounds similar to your situation . We just collected the machine some days later. The cancer specialists were able to guide us on the safe time to leave the machine before handling it again. To be honest there were no dramas and it was an uneventful experience. 👍🏻

[fraser gilmour]

radiotherapy_dialysis.pdf

[Chris Pearson]

We've just supplied a customer with custom made extremely long bloodlines for a similar set up (magnetic scanner ) so the nurse could have the machine in a seperate room from the patient but clearly with the radioactive blood and dialysate coming back to the machine it wouldn't reduce the radioactive exposure 100% but could reduce it dramatically.