Abstract
Purpose The high-dose administration of I-131 has been standing for the basic therapy method of thyroid cancer. In korea, it is not necessary for patients to be hospitalized if the administration dose are under 1.2 GBq. However, if the dose are over 1.2 GBq, the patients should be stay in special ward with radiation shield. In such cases, the radioactivity level upon release should be under a dose of $70{\mu}Sv/hr$ at a distance of approx. 1m. This regulation bring the patients to stay for about 2 to 3 days in ward before the release. Materials and Methods Using the inpatients' release data of severance hospital, an inpatient-days were retrospectively calculated and compared with practical data and estimate the inpatient-days with the conditions of korea ($70{\mu}Sv/hr$), Japan ($30{\mu}Sv/hr$), germany ($3.5{\mu}Sv/hr$ at a distance of approx. 2 m), and other european countries. Results When a effective half-life of 15.4 was used, the expected inpatient-days were calculated as 2.15 days in the condition of Japanese regulation and 1.37 days in the condition of korean regulation. The practical inpatient-days of patients in Severance hospital were 1.32 days. Conclusion As ICRP 94 has been mentioned that the release of patients administrated with I-131 for the therapy should be carefully considered because each patients has different thyroid uptake rate and their conditions with family members after the release from the ward. Nonetheless, efforts to bring more aquate data which is for getting closer to the practical data should be continuously studied.
