Alas, it is true. This blog has gone the way of so many others before it. What happened is that a project that was on the back burner got started again right after I started posting here. This is a good thing; I’m really excited about this new project.
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Earlier I wrote that the American Medical Isotopes Production Act was still stuck in the House Energy and Commerce Committee. A hopeful sign that progress is about to be made is a hearing on the bill by the Subcommittee on Energy and the Environment that took place on Sept. 9. ScienceNews has an update on the Molybdenum-99 diagnostic imaging isotope shortage. With the shutdown of the Chalk River and Petten nuclear reactors, Mo-99 production has fallen to 30 percent of normal. The article reports three strategies hospitals are employing to deal with the shortage. Some are putting patients on wait lists. [...] Yesterday was National Dosimetrist’s Day, and I would be remiss if I did not thank all of the dosimetrists out there that do such a great job. The dosimetrist is often the hub of a radiation therapy department, interacting with physicians, physicists and therapists on a daily basis. They will follow a patient [...] The last article in this series examined the distribution of dose inside a patient when they are treated with a single therapy beam. The question is, how do we use this knowledge to treat a patient in the most effective manner? We want the patient’s tumor to receive the dose that the physician [...] My knowledge of the Scottish legal system is fairly limited (ok, non-existant), but it looks like the sad case of Lisa Norris, a 16 year old girl who died in 2006 after receiving a radiation dose 58% greater than prescribed, is under investigation yet again. A fatal accident inquiry has just been launched looking [...] I have finally watched the entire House Veterans’ Affairs Committee hearing on the prostate brachytherapy program at the Philadelphia VA hospital. You can find the webcast, along with statements for the record, at the committee website. I was pleasantly surprised by the lack of grandstanding by the committee members and their restraint in [...] Another unbelievable report in the Philadelphia Inquirer about the VA prostate brachytherapy debacle. As I wrote before, the errors in the placement of the radioactive seeds went undiscovered for so long because post-implant dosimetry was not performed. This involves CT scanning the patient, finding the positions of the seeds and calculating the ultimate [...] “During my 20+ year archival career I have had to worry about wet documents, moldy paper, insect and vermin residue, and other unpleasant things, but this is the first time I have had to deal with radiation.” In the last post in this series, I talked about how we can shape the beam of radiation in order to conform it to the shape of the tumor. If all we had to do is to shape the beam, point and shoot, this job would be easy. Unfortunately, it’s a lot more [...] |
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