Treatment of thyrotoxicosis with radioactive iodine.

It is now thirteen years since Hertz and Roberts (1942) introduced radioactive iodine in the treatment of thyrotoxicosis, and in the succeeding years it has increasingly established itself in the therapy of this condition and has been widely used in the United States of America. We have previously recorded our experience in this country in a small series of cases (Blomfield et al., 1951, 1953; Wayne et al., 1952). Fraser and his colleagues (1954) have also described their results using a somewhat different technique. We have now treated more than 350 patients at Sheffield, and we present a detailed analysis of the results obtained in 140 cases followed up for at least one year. This period of time has been chosen because we found that the full effect of a single dose was obtained within one year. The same rather rigid technique has been used throughout with all the members of this group of patients, and we have aimed at producing a state of normal thyroid balance with a single therapeutic drink of the isotope. We put our results on record because we believe that they will be of interest and value to others who have used different methods to achieve control of the thyrotoxic state.