PET radiopharmaceutical use jumps almost 10% in select institutions

The use of PET radiopharmaceuticals increased from 17 percent to 26 percent in diagnostic nuclear medicine procedures, according to a report evaluating adverse effects published May 29 in the Journal of Nuclear Medicine.

The objective of the study was to find out if adverse events associated with radiopharmaceuticals had increased, but they remained stable. Edward B. Silberstein, MD, from the departments of radiology and medicine at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center, Cincinnati, Ohio, prepared the report by compiling the quarterly reports of radiopharmaceutical use from 15 academic institutions submitted during the 2007 to 2011 study period.

“Although the estimated number of nuclear medicine procedures in the United States over the 5 years of this study declined by about 9 percent, the number of procedures per institution in our study was essentially unchanged (16,533 in 2007 versus 16,753 in 2011),” wrote Silberstein. “Because we could not track changes in the use of over 40 radiopharmaceuticals, we do not have data that can more fully explain the use patterns observed.”

The results of the review indicate that 1,024,177 radiopharmaceutical administrations were monitored among the 15 institutions. Of these procedures, 207,281 were noted as diagnostic PET, 803,696 diagnostic were deemed non-PET and 13,200 were therapeutic radiopharmaceutical procedures. Another 112,830 adjunctive nonradioactive pharmaceutical administrations were included in the report.

The annual use of bone scintigraphy and radiotracer therapies remained the same during the study period. Incidence of radiopharmaceutical adverse effects was deemed to be about 2 adverse effects out of about 100,000 doses of radiopharmaceutical.