[Palliative radiotherapy with Strontium-89 in case of extended formation of skeleton metastases (author's transl)].

In order to allay pains or make them cease, fifteen patients with extended tumors and generalized formation of skeleton metastases were submitted in 1976 to an internal palliative radiotherapy. They received between 0.8 and 2.7 mCi of Sr-89, five patients were treated again after four to five months because the pains had reappeared. The results were relatively good. Two patients showed a prompt effect and were completely free of pains within 48 hours, three patients did not present any demonstrable effect. The analgetic effect remained from four days to four months. Due to the utilization of the pure beta emitter Sr-89, the radiation doses measured in the patients after the application are relatively small: after the application they amount at most to 0.5 mR/h in a distance of 1 m.