Radionuclide therapy of painful bone metastases--a comparative study between consecutive radionuclide infusions, combination with chemotherapy, and radionuclide infusions alone: an in vivo comparison of their effectiveness.

Radionuclides have been long used for the palliation of skeletal-related metastatic pain. They are almost invariably used as the last resource for pain palliation. Their use as single agents with dose escalations, in combination with biphosphonates or chemotherapy is well known in the peer-reviewed literature; however, little is known about the combination between different agents. In our study, we used consecutive administration of 2 different radionuclides such as (186)Re-1,1-hydroxyethylidenediphosphonate ((186)Re-HEDP) and (89)Strontium Chloride ((89)Sr-Cl) separated by adequate period of time to allow bone marrow recovery in patients with high chance of bone pain relapse and compared it with (89)Sr-Cl and chemotherapy group and (186)Re-HEDP with bisphosphonates. The end result was that treatment with consecutive radionuclides was much more effective and safe than the other 2 groups.