First experience of 192Ir source stuck event during high-dose-rate brachytherapy in Japan

Abstract

Purpose: To share the experience of an iridium-192 (192 Ir) source stuck event during high-dose-rate (HDR) brachytherapy for cervical cancer. Material and methods: In 2014, we experienced the first source stuck event in Japan when treating cervical cancer with HDR brachytherapy. The cause of the event was a loose screw in the treatment device that interfered with the gear reeling the source. This event had minimal clinical effects on the patient and staff; however, after the event, we created a normal treatment process and an emergency process. In the emergency processes, each staff member is given an appropriate role. The dose rate distribution calculated by the new Monte Carlo simulation system was used as a reference to create the process. Results: According to the calculated dose rate distribution, the dose rates inside the maze, near the treatment room door, and near the console room were ≅ 10-2 [cGy · h-1 ], 10-3 [cGy · h-1 ], and << 10-3 [cGy · h-1 ], respectively. Based on these findings, in the emergency process, the recorder was evacuated to the console room, and the rescuer waited inside the maze until the radiation source was recovered. This emergency response manual is currently a critical workflow once a year with vendors. Conclusions: We reported our experience of the source stuck event. Details of the event and proposed emergency process will be helpful in managing a patient safety program for other HDR brachytherapy users.

Mixed Reality Visualization of Radiation Dose for Health Professionals and Patients in Interventional Radiology

“…Moreover, FDEIRs can estimate the air dose distribution in a room. Estimated air doses have been consistent with measurements taken using dosimeters [ 4 , 5 ]. The accuracy of FDEIR for skin and air dose estimation was validated in earlier studies [ 2 , 4 , 5 ].…”

“…Estimated air doses have been consistent with measurements taken using dosimeters [ 4 , 5 ]. The accuracy of FDEIR for skin and air dose estimation was validated in earlier studies [ 2 , 4 , 5 ]. Simulation geometries were constructed according to earlier studies [ 2 , 5 ].…”

“…Monte Carlo (MC) method has been well known for its requirement of long durations to produce highly precise estimates. Recently, the MC method, which can be executed on a graphics processing unit (GPU) card for performing fast estimation, is reportedly used for dose calculation algorithms in IR [ 2 , 4 – 6 ]. The method can calculate a patient’s skin dose distribution in real-time and can calculate the air dose distribution in a room rapidly and three-dimensionally (3D).…”

Body Surface Radiation Exposure in Interventional Echocardiographers During Structural Heart Disease Procedures

“…Previous studies have validated its accuracy using dosimeters and other Monte Carlo approaches. 12 , 13 , 14 The simulation was conducted using a single Tesla P100 graphical processing unit (NVIDIA Corp) on a supercomputing system (SGI Rackable C2112-4GP3/C1102-GP8, Reedbush-L, Silicon Graphics International Corp) at the Information Technology Center of the University of Tokyo. This study simulated trillion incident photons with a 5-keV cutoff energy.…”

Simulation of Radiation Dose for Female Physicians: Radiation Exposure Risk in Structural Heart Disease Procedures

“…Its accuracy compared with dosimeters and other Monte Carlo codes has been well validated in earlier studies. 8,9,11,12) The simulation was conducted using graphical processing units (Tesla P100; NVIDIA Corp., Santa Clara, CA, USA) on a supercomputing system (SGI Rackable C2112-4GP3/C1102-GP8, Reedbush-L; Silicon Graphics International Corp., Fremont, CA, USA and the FUJITSU Supercomputer PRIMEHPC FX1000 and FUJITSU Server PRIMERGY GX2570, Wisteria/BDEC-01; FUJITSU Corp., Tokyo, Japan) at the Information Technology Center of the University of Tokyo. This study simulated a trillion incident photons with 5 keV cutoff energy for the photon.…”