  In this letter we introduce a new method to determine the radiative neutrino
decay rate in the presence of a medium. Our approach is based on the
generalisation of the optical theorem at finite temperature and density.
Differently from previous works on this subject, our method allows to account
for dispersive and dissipative electromagnetic properties of the medium. Some
inconsistencies that are present in the literature are pointed-out and
corrected here. We shortly discuss the relevance of our results for neutrino
evolution in the early universe.
