Keywords:
Interventional vascular, Radioprotection / Radiation dose, Soft tissues / Skin, Fluoroscopy, Radiation safety
Authors:
M. Dehairs, H. Bosmans, G. Maleux, N. Marshall; Leuven/BE
DOI:
10.26044/ecr2019/C-2855
Aims and objectives
To improve radiation safety awareness,
our interventional radiology center is planning to organize systematic patient follow up in case of elevated peak skin dose (PSD) after interventional angiography.
The aim of this study was to help prepare this action by estimating the workload this would have created last year and the severity of the lesions. According to the NCRP168,
a first trigger warning for PSD and Dose Area product (DAP) should be given at 2Gy and 300Gy.cm²,
respectively.
Furthermore,
a PSD of 3Gy and a DAP of 500Gy.cm² are considered significant radiation dose levels (Table 1).
For this study,
a dedicated dose-monitoring platform was used which calculates the patient PSD.
Without dedicated software however,
the medical personnel usually does not have an indication of the PSD,
meaning they are forced to use the DAP or the cumulative air kerma at the reference point (Ka,r),
indicated on the system.
These values are however less suitable to give an indication on potential skin damage.
Therefore,
this study also analysed how many and which patients with high PSD are missed or falsely signaled using DAP or Ka,r.