Congress:
EuroSafe Imaging 2019
Keywords:
Action 7 - Radiation protection of children, Action 8 - Radiation protection training and learning material, Action 13 - Stakeholder engagement and collaboration, Paediatric, Radioprotection / Radiation dose, Nuclear medicine conventional, Radiation safety, Health policy and practice, Education, Education and training, Quality assurance
Authors:
F. Fahey, S. T. Treves, M. Goske, M. Gelfand, M. Parisi, M. Lassmann, B. Sexton-Stallone
DOI:
10.26044/esi2019/ESI-0058
Description of activity and work performed
The Working Group developed the development of the North American Consensus Guidelines for Administered Radiopharmaceutical Activities in Children and Adolescents published in 2011 (5).
These guidelines provided standard administered activities for 11 radiopharmaceuticals commonly used in children. The “Go with the Guidelines” campaign (Figure 2) sponsored by the Image Gently Alliance and the SNMMI sought to deliver a copy of the Guidelines poster to every nuclear medicine clinic in North America. A follow-up survey of the original North American pediatric hospitals performed in 2013 reveled that in most cases their local protocols were modified according to the Guidelines resulting in an overall reduction of radiation exposures in their patients (6). A survey of nearly 200 general hospitals in the US also performed in 2013 indicated that 83% of the sites knew about Image Gently,
55% new about the North American Guidelines and practically all sites familiar with the Guidelines modified their practice of pediatric nuclear medicine as a result (7).
Following the publication of the North American Guidelines,
efforts were succeeded to harmonize them with the Paediatric Dosage Card developed by the European Association of Nuclear Medicine (EANM).
As a result,
new versions of both the North American Guidelines and the EANM Paediatric Dosage Card were published in 2014 (8). In 2016 (9),
6 additional procedures were added to Guidelines (Figure 3). The efforts of the Nuclear Medicine Working Group were recognized by the Image Gently Alliance with the 2017 Butterfly Award (Figure 4). Members of the Working Group are listed in Figure 1.