Stay away from pregnant women and babies if you're going through radiation therapy - true or false?

[emkana]

I heard about somebody today who was told to stay away from her pregnant daughter and then the baby when born for up to two weeks after the radiation therapy finishes. Is that general advice? And if so, why?

My Grandad was told that when I was pg. Don't know why though.

guess it depends what you're having/had

One of the girls at work had radiotherapy for a thyroid issue - she was given a card to carry at all times saying what/how much she'd had and was advised to stay away from pregnant women, also told if anything happened and she had to go to A&E she shouldn't go in till they'd moved vulnerable people out of the way.

We tested her with the lab Geiger counter and it screamed - def wouldn't have wanted to be near her if I was pregnant.

I had two lots of radioactive iodine to take out my thyroid gland and I had to stay away from pregnant women and children - this was before we had ds's so was great as I got 2 weeks off work (I used to work in a child and family department!) and felt absolutely fine!

It can be tough if you need the treatment and have small children though as you really do have to be isolated from them.

Hmmm.... I am puzzled now. I just found this on the net:

"Family Members or Friends Receiving External Beam Radiation Therapy
It is commonly thought that after radiation therapy with a high-energy x-ray machine (a linear accelerator) or a teletherapy unit (a machine with a high-energy gamma radiation source) that the person who received the treatment may be ?radioactive.? This is not true. The radiation therapy does not cause the patient to become radioactive and be a source of radiation exposure. Therefore, contact with individuals receiving external radiation therapy does not have to be changed or limited."

Dottydot, it does say that things are different if you had to take radioactive stuff for therapy purposes.

It depends on the type of ratioation therapy. But yes, there are some that mean you should stay away from people who are PG or the very young.

Some types of ratioation 'linger' longer in the bosy. This is particularly true of things like iodine that are 'collected' by parts of the body, such as the thyroid. If they are treated with a sampple of the radiation it will take a while to go.....the lenth of time depends on the #Half Life' of the radioactive compoint' and this varies from compound to compound.

Sometimes people are threated with irradiated 'seeds' which are placed where needed to 'kill' the cancer. But this can affect sensitive people like those who are PG.

It may interest you to know that Marie Curie's lab books are still so radioactive that they cannot be read and must be stored in a lead lined box for safety. the compounds she was working with have very long half lives and it may be centuaries or more, before the books can be studued!

Emma...Having a beam shot through you doesn make you radiocative....the radiation doesn't linger. But being treated directly with a radioactive chemical can mean that you are radioactive for a while.

I'm slightly freaking out now, because MIl had radiation therapy when I was pregnant with ds.

we were told not to try to conceive for 2 months after dh had finished getting radio therapy for testiclar cancer

not that particularly helps...

it depends on the type of radiation- external beam radiotherapy, where they shine Xrays at a specific point on your body, doesn't cause the patient to become radioactive.

Radioactive iodine given by mouth, is taken up by every cell in your body (but primarily by the thyroid), and stays there till it is excreted by the body, so this means that the patient is radioactive for as long as it takes to excrete the iodine. The radioactivity could theoretically cause damage to an unborn child.

If she was put in a machine and 'zapped' for a few seconds, she would not have been radioactive, Honest!

having a radioactive compound placed in your body is a totaly different thing.

She would have been warned if it was a problem.

Please don't worry.

what sort of radiation therapy did she have, emkana?

Okay thanks

Sorry tissy, x post, she had external radiation therapy.

That wouldn't have made her radioactive

I guess that the person was treated with a radioactive isotope.

As far as possible hospitals use X-rays for radiation therapy. The advantage is that you switch the X-ray machine on and off. The X-rays can be focussed so that only the tumour is targetted by using pieces of aluminium. It works a bit like a lens. X-rays do not make a person radioactive.

Radioactive isotopes stay in the body much longer and the person would be radioactive. There is a the radioactive half life of the substance (ie. as the radioactive substance decays there is less of it) and the biological half life. (This is the time that it takes for the body to get rid of a substance by excreting it. (ie. faeces, urine, sweat)

I think the risks to a pregnant woman would depend a lot on the radioactive isotope. Some stay in the body longer than others, some decay more rapidly, some radioactive isotopes are more radioactive than others. Different isotopes give off different types of radiation. To make matters even more complicated some radioactive isotopes decay into another radioactive substance.

There are three different types of radiation, alpha, beta and gamma. Alpha radiation would be stopped by the person's own skin. However I think someone who had been treated with a beta or gamma emitter would be dangerous.

true (I think) we had a woman on our ward who had been given some sort of radiactive injection, the ward manager checked if any of us could be pregnant, but only when dealing with bodily fluids like urine

My sister was having some tests, while i was pg and was told she couldn't see me for 2 weeks after her tests.