I just wanted to share with this group a positive experience with physicians
outside of lactation that I had today.
At the hospital I work, lung scans are done to rule out a pulmonary embolus.
The doctors orders and instructions to the Mom's have been extremely variable
and not based on the literature (pump & dump 24-48 hours). So my partner and
I are planning to write up a policy for the staff to follow.
I looked up in Tom Hale's web site and the agent used is Technetium-99M. The
half life is >6 hours and with a dose of 4 mCi a mother would need to
interrupt breastfeeding for 12 hours. I contacted the Nuclear Med Dept for
information and they were uncomfortable with this recommendation even though
it was from the NRC.
I guess I had called them so many times they decided to invite me to their
Radiation Safety Meeting today.
I was a little apprehensive but came prepared with my research. Each
hospital has a Safety Officer who is a physician overseeing the safety in the
hospital's radiation department. When my part came up on the agenda the
Safety Officer was very supportive of breastfeeding (but still conservative)
and said he recommended 24 hours of pumping and SAVING the milk so all the
radioactive material was excreted from the breast milk. He did say that
according to NRC the mother could resume breastfeeding after 12 hours as long
as she knew what the levels were in her milk at that time (>00.1 uCi). He
also recommended that the mother pump ahead of time so her baby could have
breast milk while there was an interruption in breastfeeding. He also told
the group that if I 123 is used to do thyroid studies the mother does not
have to interrupt breastfeeding.
I can't wait to write this up.
Smiling in the Boston Area :-)
Ann Perry RN IBCLC
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