EANM Dosimetry Committee Series on Standard Operational Procedures for Pre-Therapeutic Dosimetry II. Dosimetry prior to radioiodine therapy of benign thyroid diseases

The EANM Dosimetry Committee Series “Standard Operational Procedures for Pre-Therapeutic Dosimetry” (SOP) provides advice to scientists and clinicians on how to perform patient-specific absorbed dose assessments. This particular SOP describes how to tailor the therapeutic activity to be administered for radioiodine therapy of benign thyroid diseases such as Graves’ disease or hyperthyroidism. Pretherapeutic dosimetry is based on the assessment of the individual 131I kinetics in the target tissue after the administration of a tracer activity. The present SOP makes proposals on the equipment to be used and guides the user through the measurements. Time schedules for the measurement of the fractional 131I uptake in the diseased tissue are recommended and it is shown how to calculate from these datasets the therapeutic activity necessary to administer a predefined target dose in the subsequent therapy. Potential sources of error are pointed out and the inherent uncertainties of the procedures depending on the number of measurements are discussed. The theoretical background and the derivation of the listed equations from compartment models of the iodine kinetics are explained in a supplementary file published online only.