Opinion: NRC: be straight about when clinicians need to report errors that lead to radiation exposure
A recent action by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) should have protected patients who are inadvertently exposed to potentially high doses of radiation due to faulty injections or infusions. But it instead preferentially protects the nuclear medicine practitioners who are subject to its regulations and oversight.
At issue is the NRC’s policy that exempts practitioners of nuclear medicine — clinicians who use radioactive pharmaceuticals to diagnose or treat disease — from having to report when they mistakenly inject radiopharmaceuticals into a patient’s tissue rather than into a vein as intended. These errors, called extravasations or infiltrations, can affect the procedure and expose healthy tissue to potentially high doses of radiation.
