Two simple tools for preparing iridium-192 wire for clinical use.

Abstract

192Ir wire is supplied by Amersham International either as hairpins (or single pins) which are 60 mm long and 0.6 mm in diameter or as 0.5 m lengths of 0.3 mm diameter wire. One of its advantages in interstitial therapy is that it may be cut to the required length. A tool for cutting hairpins has been described by Collins (1975). This note describes a device which is perhaps simpler and has the advantage that it is easy to cut the pins to different leg lengths. Two commercial devices exist for loading the 0.3 mm wire into nylon tubing, but neither is ideal. The TEM loader (a commercial version of that described by Darby et al (1972)) is very expensive and the 192Ir wire may fail to feed correctly if the instrument is not perfectly aligned, although such occasions are now rare following a recent redesign. The Amersham loader (Amersham International—Type N.410), although inexpensive, is difficult to use (but we understand that Amersham International are currently redesigning their loader). This note describ...