Speaker
Description
In nuclear medicine departments, diagnostic and therapeutic procedures carried out generate radioactives wastes. These wastes are an inevitable result of the use of radionuclides in unsealed form.
All liquids, gloves or syringes etc.., used in diagnosis or therapy, considered as contaminated material must be managed safely. Within healthcare establishments, clear and strict protocols are therefore followed according to the nature of the waste in accordance with radiation protection standards.
In addition, particular attention should be paid to the waste that may be produced by patients outside the nuclear medicine unit, in particular when they are cared for by other healthcare establishments in order to provide them with information necessary for the collection and disposal .
Nuclear medicine department of Salah AZAIEZ Institut, dating from 1970, currently has three diagnostic unities (conventional imaging-PET-CT and RIA) and a therapeutic unity (metabolic radiotherapy using iodine 131). It is equiped with 2 storage rooms dédicated to liquid and solid radioactive waste.
Substances delivered to the department are of different types: ready-to-use radioactive packages (I131, MIBG-I1123..), products from industrial cyclotrons (18-FDG) and technetium (molybdenum) generators which will be used to prepare radiopharmaceuticals in hot room and whose activity delivered per week is around 20 GBq for a medium-sized department (approximately 4500 examinations/year).
We illustrate the different procedures adopted by our department for the management of its radioactive waste .
