Assessment of radiation doses to cardiologists during interventional examinations

• Published in: Medical physics (Lancaster) Vol. 36; no. 8; p. 3730
• Main Authors: Bor, D, Olgar, T, Onal, E, Caglan, A, Toklu, T
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States 01.08.2009
• Subjects: Cardiology; Databases, Factual; Extremities - radiation effects; Fluoroscopy; Humans; Occupational Exposure; Phantoms, Imaging; Physicians; Radiation Dosage; Radiation Protection; Radiometry; Scattering, Radiation; Time Factors
• ISSN: 0094-2405
• DOI: 10.1118/1.3168971

The accuracy of two on line dosimetric techniques was investigated for the estimation of cardiologist doses. The first technique involves the establishment of a database relating the cardiologist extremity doses to patient DAP values. Doses of nine cardiologists were measured together with patient doses during the interventional cardiac examinations of 166 patients for this purpose. Data were collected from five cardiology departments. The mean of the eye, thyroid, waist, right-left wrist, and right-left leg doses per procedure were measured as 72.4 (31.6-107.1), 68.5 (13.3-174.6), 11.2 (0.9-28.4), 67.8 (21.9-120.3) to 216 (52.7-425.4), and 137 (51.4-386.2) to 384 (135-1168.3) microGy/procedure. The effective doses were calculated according to the use of protection tools and a mean value of 12.14 (1.2-30.2) microSv/procedure was found. The ratios of staff dose to patient DAP were found to be within the range of 0.14-3.75 for each procedure. In the second method, cardiologist doses were calculated and compared with the measured values. Scatter doses were measured at the positions of cardiologists from Rando phantom exposures using similar conditions with patient procedures for this purpose. The parameters obtained from these exposures and patient examinations were used to calculate the doses to cardiologists.