RESTON, Va., January 18, 2006 -- A report from the United States Pharmacopeia--the official public standards-setting authority for all prescription and over-the-counter medicines and other health care products manufactured and sold in the United States--demonstrates just how safe nuclear medicine procedures are for today's patients.

"The number of errors voluntarily reported for nuclear medicine in this comprehensive analysis--resulting from environmental, situational or organizations factors--is exceptionally low," noted Society of Nuclear Medicine President Peter S. Conti, M.D., Ph.D., professor of radiology, clinical pharmacy and biomedical engineering at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles.

"A Chartbook of 2000-2004 Findings From Intensive Care Units and Radiological Services" provides a comprehensive analysis of medication error records voluntarily reported by 315 medical facilities, representing about 10 percent of U.S. acute care hospitals, explained Robert E. Henkin, M.D., former director of nuclear medicine at the Loyola University Medical Center in Maywood, Ill. "We agree with the USP findings and are pleased that nuclear medicine procedures--such as positron emission tomography (PET) scans to diagnose and monitor treatment in cancer, cardiac stress tests to analyze heart function, bone scans for orthopedic injuries and lung scans for blood clots--continue to be safely prescribed, transcribed, dispensed and administered," said Henkin, who also heads SNM's Committee on Health Care Policy and Practice.
USP's findings are part of its sixth annual report on medication errors reported to MEDMARX, its national medication error and adverse drug reaction reporting program, designed for use in hospitals and health systems. The report focuses on three clinical areas--nuclear medicine, cardiac catheterization labs and radiology departments--and intensive care units for the five-year period from 2000 to 2004.

The report indicates that four nuclear medicine patients were affected by dispensing errors--such as being administered the wrong radiopharmaceutical or receiving an improper dose--and no patient suffered permanent injury. Given the participant information provided in the report, "the results would indicate that approximately 40 errors might be made in 20 million nuclear medicine procedures," said Henkin. "This is an incredibly small figure--so small as to be of questionable statistical significance," he added. Henkin, who has more than 30 years experience in nuclear medicine, said published data have indicated the error rate for this medical specialty is about .01 percent. In addition, Edward B. Silberstein, M.D., a member of SNM's Radiopharmaceutical and Pharmacopeia committees who is with University Hospital in Cincinnati, Ohio, has cited two to three adverse events per 100,000 nuclear medicine procedures and no errors in more than 70,000 injections performed in conjunction with PET scans in two nationwide studies published in the Journal of Nuclear Medicine.

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