Consensus Guidelines for Administered Radiopharmaceutical Activities in Children and Adolescents.

10/14/2010

For your information, a workgroup composed of pediatric nuclear medicine physicians, technologists and physicists in North America, representing the Society of Nuclear Medicine (SNM) through the Pediatric Imaging Council, and also the Society for Pediatric Radiology and the American College of Radiology (ACR) has issued Consensus Guidelines for Administered Radiopharmaceutical Activities in Children and Adolescents.

The guidelines are available at the Image gently Website http://spr.affiniscape.com/associations/5364/ig/index.cfm?page=641

These guidelines differ from the EANM Pediatric Dose Card in some aspects:
(a) Administered activities in these guidelines are slightly lower for infants and small children.
(b) Administered activities for 99mTc-DMSA and 18F-fluoride are considerably lower in these guidelines.
(c) Administered activities for orally administered 99mTc-labeled radiopharmaceuticals and for radionuclide cystography provide a range of administered activities for each type of study rather than an administered activity/kg.
(d) These guidelines more closely represent clinical practice in North American pediatric centers.

The assumptions used by the societies in constructing the consensus guidelines are:
(a) Planar whole body and SPECT imaging studies were performed on a dual-detector gamma camera equipped with a high resolution collimator.
(b) The determination of the administered activity for the pediatric patient is based on body weight alone except for nuclear cystogram and the gastric emptying studies.

Individual practitioners may use lower administered activities if their equipment or software permits them to do so. Higher administered activities may be required in selected patients.