Question: if someone was over dosed with the nuclear medicine what would happen to them?

Jen Dennis answered on 8 Mar 2017:

Great question! The answer is, rather boringly, probably not an awful lot! We have very strict rules as to the amount of radioactive material we’re allowed to give to patients in order to keep the risks of the test to a minimum. If we overdo it for any reason, the overall increase in radiation dose will actually be very small. Most of our tests give a dose around the same as you get just from the natural background (there’s radiation all around you all the time) over a year. So the extra adds up to very little really. It would slightly increase the risk of getting some sort of cancer or other radiation-related illness later in life but the overall risk would still be very small.

From my point of view, though, any overexposure to a patient means a big pile of electronic paperwork investigating what happened, why it happened and how we can stop it happening again. Fortunately, it doesn’t happen very often at all as we’ve got really good procedures in place to keep everyone as safe as possible.

Hope this answers your question. If not, let me know and I’ll have another shot!