Dosimetric aspects of a national survey of diagnostic and interventional radiology in Switzerland

Abstract

The effective dose delivered to the patient was determined, by modeling, for 257 types of examinations covering the different modalities of diagnostic and interventional radiology. The basic operational dosimetric quantities considered were obtained from the parameters of the examinations on the basis of dosimetric models. These models required a precise characterization of each examination. The operational dosimetric quantities were converted into doses to organs and effective doses using appropriate conversion factors. The determination of the collective effective dose to the Swiss population requires a number of corrections to account for the variability of several parameters: sensitivity of the detection system, age, gender, and build of the patient. The use of various dosimetric models is illustrated in this paper for a limited number of examination types covering the different radiological modalities, for which the established typical effective doses are given. With regard to individual doses, the study indicated that the average effective doses per type of examination can be classified into three levels: (a) the weakly irradiating examinations (less than 0.1 mSv), which represent 78% of the examinations and 4% of the collective dose, (b) the moderately irradiating examinations (between 0.1 mSv and 10 mSv), which represent 21% of the examinations and 72% of the collective dose, (c) the strongly irradiating examinations (more than 10 mSv), which represent 1% of the examinations and 24% of the collective dose.

Assessment of Entrance Skin Dose in routine x-ray examinations of chest, skull, abdomen and pelvis of children in five selected hospitals in Nigeria.

“…The results were found to be lower in all other projections except for Chest PA and Chest Lateral examinations which is most performed radiograph in Nigeria (about 56% of the total patient). The mean effective doses when compared with those found in literature (Aroua et al 2002) are lower. This mean that the radiation risk to an average patient in the hospitals included in this work is low and the risk to workers in the hospitals will be generally low.…”

Number of X-ray examinations performed on paediatric and geriatric patients compared with adult patients

“…The age distributions used in this work, n pa (a), are established from the data collected during the 1998 nationwide survey on the exposure of the Swiss population by radiodiagnostics (4)(5)(6) , while the age distribution of the Swiss general population, n gp (a), for the same year, is established using the official published data (7) . Figure 1 shows the age distribution n pa (a) for the total number of X-ray examinations carried out in Switzerland considering all the radiological modalities and compares it with the age distribution of the Swiss general population.…”

Adult reference levels in diagnostic and interventional radiology for temporary use in Switzerland

“…They have been established by dosimetric modelling considering average technical parameters for each type of examination, in the framework of the 1998 nationwide survey on the exposure of the Swiss population by medical radiology (32,33) . Various operational dose quantities are used to establish DRLs depending on the radiological modality considered as presented in Table 1.…”