Quantitative estimation of red-cell uptake in the spleen using⁸¹Rb – and⁵¹Cr-labelled red cells

Value of surface counting in predicting response to splenectomy in haemolytic anaemia

“…A method enabling quantitative estimation of destruction of red cells in the spleen would improve the accuracy of predicting the response to splenectomy (Szur, Glass, Lewis, Grammaticos, and De Garreta, 1968). It should be emphasized, however, that while surface counting does provide a valuable technique which aids in the assessment there is need for a thorough investigation of all the factors responsible for a patient's anaemia in deciding whether such a patient would be likely to benefit from splenectomy.…”

Collimation and surface counting in haematology

“…This increases the significance of the uptake curves, since a larger proportion of the recorded counts then originate from the region of interest and a smaller proportion from the surrounding tissue and other organs. Although these improvements apply equally to surface counting with either iron or chromium they are of particular importance in 51Cr studies in which a quantiative measurement of the splenic red cell destruction is being made (Szur et al, 1968;Williams, Szur, Glass, Lewis, Pettit, and Ahuja, 1974), when it is important that the number of excess counts shall be directly related to the removal of red cells by the spleen. By the use of dual multiple parallel hole collimators, improved discrimination against the effects of radioactivity outside the region of interest is achieved with no loss of sensitivity to the counts originating from within the region of interest as compared with the conventional single detector single-hole collimator system.…”