ABSTRACT
Bone-seeking radionuclides have been used to treat painful bone metastases for almost 50 years. Radioisotopes were first used in cancer therapy shortly after the discovery of artificial radioactivity in 1933 (1), and the first report of a potential role in pain palliation was in 1942 in a single patient with prostate cancer who was treated with strontium-89 (89Sr) (2). By 1950, radioisotopes of phosphorus (P) and strontium (Sr) had been reported as bone-seeking radiopharmaceuticals with the potential to contribute to the management of patients with hematological malignancies and solid cancers metastatic to bone (2,3).
