Pattern of radiopharmaceutical administration to patients between 1982 and 1986

Analysis of the workload of a nuclear medicine department over the period 1982 to 1986 has shown the prevalence of repeated investigations in individual patients. Records from 23,152 investigations on 17,063 patients indicated that 88.5% received a single administration and only 0.5% received more than four doses of the same radiopharmaceutical. Patterns of usage of a wide range of radiopharmaceuticals are presented and show that the technetium bone imaging agent is the radiopharmaceutical most commonly used for repeated administrations. Analysis of the radiation dose to individual patients arising from radiopharmaceutical administration has shown that only two patients in the survey exceeded 50 mSv per annum and approximately 25% of patients exceeded 5 mSv per annum.