Computed Tomography (CT) has nowadays an important role in clinical practice, having been observed an increasing number of available CT equipment and a growing trend to use CT as a complementary diagnostic modality in the past few years [1, 2]. In Portugal, specifically, the number of CT equipment in hospital context has increased, particularly between 2008 and 2015, and the number of CT studies also presents a growing trend (Figure 1)[3,4]. According to data from 2008, CT studies represents about 12% of all diagnostic imaging...

An exploratory and retrospective study was conducted based on data related to routine head CT studies performed with axial mode and stored in the PACS archives of a medium-sized public health institution in Portugal Central Region. The sample comprised all adult (aged 18 years or older) patients submitted to routine unenhanced-head CT during a one-week period regardless of clinical indication or associated pathology. All examinations were performed in a 16-slices CT system. Demographic anonymized patient data, scan protocol information and dose report data were collected...

Sample The analysis of the routine head CT studies was supported on a sample composed by 115 patients (59 female, 59 male) with ages between 18 and 94 years old mostly coming from the urgency room (109 patients). As presented in Table 2 , in this sample four different scan protocols were used, but more frequently Protocol I and Protocol II. Descriptive statistical analysis Principal descriptive results obtained were resumed in the Table 3 . Concerning total DLP variable an average of 1109,82 ± 9,20...

Regarding the obtained results we concluded that there is a strong variability in the head positioning, based on the diffused variability of the relation between gantry tilt and scan angle, explained in part by the patient´s age and its neck mobility. As expected, it was also possible to conclude that the posterior fossa range has a great influence on the total dose exposure of the patients submitted to routine head CT when compared with the supratentorial ranges. So, it makes this range a good target...

Rui Miguel da Silva Castro Pereira ([email protected]) Assistant Professor at the School of Health Sciences, University of Aveiro. MSc in Health Biochemistry Tecnhology from the ESTSP (School of Health Technologies of Oporto) in 2012 and Degree in Radiology (Health Technology) from the ESSUA (School of Health Sciences, University of Aveiro in 2007, is now attending a PhD in Advanced Biotechnology at the University of Vigo. Rui Pereira is Assistant Professor in Escola Superior de Saúde da Universidade de Aveiro and Radiographer in Centro Hospitalar do...

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