Quality assurance autoradiography to verify seed loading before prostate implantation

An important quality control procedure before permanent implantation for prostate cancer is the verification and documentation of accurate seed loading in needles. In this report, 23 consecutive patients who underwent prostate seed implantation had autoradiography performed on all needles before implantation. Autoradiography confirmed accurate loading in all but six (0.7%) of 845 needles. Errors in loading, such as wrong loading sequence and wrong number of seeds/spacers, were observed and corrected before implantation. The time required to verify accuracy of seed loading by autoradiography was 20 to 30 minutes per patient. Autoradiography is a simple quality control measure that will eliminate the occurrence of errors in seed loading and allow placement of seeds more accurately as planned.