Hi Cindy,
I recently worked with a mom who has Papillary CA of the thyroid and will
need radioactive iodine TX sometime postpartum to finish her treatment. I
looked into the different types of radioactive iodides and their half life.
Tom Hale has a good web page on this.
Why does your mom need this done now? I will send her an e-mail also. If this
is for diagnosing something, can it wait till she weans? If this tracer has
to be done now, Tom informed me that using "fresh" I 123 there would be very
little that would be in the breast milk and maybe 24-48 hrs of pumping.
The mom I was working with delivered 3 weeks ago and is doing great. She meet
with the Endocrinologist and gave him all the info I had researched. He asked
her how long she had wanted to breastfeed, and she said originally 1 year. He
did not want to give her the tracer dose of iodine to evaluate her thyroid
and not follow with the TX with the I 131 so he is going to evaluate her
thyroid at 6 weeks with ultrasound and therefore she will not have to
interrupt her nursing at all. He will cont. to follow her with ultrasounds
till he sees the time to TX her. I told her that my recommendation was to
wean prior to TX with I 131 because the lactating br takes on a high level of
the iodine and the pumping time would be greater than 50 days. She was
disappointed with this news but plans to do this.
I meet with her next week to start building up a supply.
Ann Perry RN IBCLC

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