RADIUM RETENTION IN MAN AFTER MULTIPLE INJECTIONS

THE POWER FUNCTION RE-EVALUATED

¹ From the Health Division, Argonne National Laboratory, Argonne, Illinois

The parameters proposed by Norris et al.^12,13 for the power function, R = 0.54 t^0.52, that has been widely employed as a description of the retention of radium in humans, have been recalculated. The new computation was based on a 33 year span of data collected on 8 patients who received radium by injection in 1931-1933, and who were studied by Norris and his colleagues in 1951-1953. In several cases the previously employed radium injection schedule was revised on the basis of information from original hospital records. The new analysis yielded average power functions of R = 0.30 t^-0.44 for the complete series of 8 patients and R = 0.20 t^-0.36 for the 5 patients whose injection schedules are more reliably known. The individually fitted power functions for the 8 patients ranged from R = 0.15 t^-0.19 to R = 0.98 t^-0.63. The retention of radium in humans after one year had elapsed since administration can be expressed as well by a single exponential term with a half-time of 14.98 years and an injected dose coefficient of 0.0246 as by the average power function. This single exponential term and the power function, R = 0.20 t^-0.36, are equally satisfactory for estimating the total amount of radium that entered the bloodstream of these patients.

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