Post-treatment Exposure Rates for ⁹⁰Y Microsphere Patients: A Comparison of Products

Abstract

There has been a significant increase in the use of yttrium-90 microspheres in treating liver malignancies. This increase can be seen over the last 30 years, and FDA approval of two products- SiRTeX SIR-Spheres and Boston Scientific TheraSpheres- has helped in the proliferation of these treatments. As the increase in use of both products rose- which is true at our institution- there was a need to determine if there should be special considerations for patients who receive one product compared to patients who receive the other product. This was investigated by measuring exposure rates for several regions of the patient before and after implantation. An independent samples t-test analysis (ɑ=0.05) was performed for a total of 50 patients (25 TheraSphere and 25 SIR-Spheres) to determine if the products behaved similarly to the extent that exposure to others is minimized and ALARA principles were kept. The results showed that the products exhibit no significant differences in terms of exposure rates, which suggests that there is no need for unique aspects of one procedure for one product compared to the other.