Program Information

Brachytherapy Iodine-125 Seeds: New Laboratory Developed in Brazil

c daruich de souza*, M Chuery Martins Rostelato, C Zeituini, J Moura, F Rodrigues de Mattos, F dos Santos Peleias Jr, E Santana de Moura, A Feher, O da Costa, Instituto de Pesquisas Energeticas e Nucleares-IPEN-CNEN, Sao Paulo, Sao Paulo

SU-E-T-356 Sunday 3:00PM - 6:00PM Room: Exhibit Hall

Purpose: In Brazil, cancer has become a health issue. The prostate cancer is the first larger death cause among men. The country urges to develop new treatments such as Brachytherapy. The treatment is performed only in private hospitals due to its high cost. As a result, brazilian public hospitals do not have brachytherapy as a treatment option. Energy and Nuclear Research Institute IPEN/CNEN established a program for the production of 125Iodine seeds in Brazil. The 125Iodine seeds demand in Brazil is around 8,000 seeds per year.
Methods: The 125Iodine is fixated onto the silver substrate using a new procedure (methodology is under patent process). The process lasts only 5 hours and the efficiency is up to 90%. The seeds sealing is accomplished by laser welding process resulting in a homogeneous (with only one pulse) weld without inclusions, cracks or fissures. After sealing, the weld integrity was evaluated with the use of an optical microscopy and leakage test, better than those presented in ISO 9978 standard. All of these procedures are new developed by the Brazilian researchers.
Results: After almost 10 years of research and implementation IPEN laboratory is ready. The 125iodine fixation process, the laser welding and the quality control is fully automated. This process took a long time mostly because the precision required due to the seed size. With the chemical process established, the waste management is under implementation. The dosimetry method is under implementation and the final parameters are being calculated.
Conclusion: The group will start the production line in 2013. With the lower cost, we hope to make the treatment more feasible to more patients.

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