SOLLID – a single centre study to develop methods to investigate the effects of low radiation doses within nuclear medicine, to enable multicentre epidemiological investigations

Abstract

There is continuing debate concerning the risks of secondary malignancies from low levels of radiation exposure. The current model used for radiation protection is predicated on the assumption that even very low levels of exposure may entail risk. This has profound implications for medical procedures involving ionising radiation as radiation doses must be carefully monitored, and for diagnostic procedures are minimised as far as possible. This incurs considerable expense. The SOLLID study (ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT03580161) aims to develop the methodology to enable a large-scale epidemiological investigation of the effect of radiopharmaceutical administrations to patients undergoing diagnostic nuclear medicine procedures. Patients will undergo a series of scans in addition to that acquired as standard of care to enable the radiation doses delivered to healthy organs to be accurately calculated. Detailed analysis will be performed to determine the uncertainty in the radiation dose calculations as a function of the number and type of scans acquired. It is intended that this will inform a subsequent long-term multicentre epidemiological study that would address the question definitively. Secondary aims of the study are to evaluate the range of absorbed doses that are delivered from diagnostic nuclear medicine procedures and to use current risk models to ascertain the relative risks from these administrations.