Justification and optimization are fundamental principles of radiation protection used for medical purposes. The medical justification is extremely relevant to the radiologist and states that no practice or source attached to a practice should be authorized unless it produces sufficient benefit to the exposed individual or to society in order to compensate for the detriment that may be caused [1, 2]. The prescription of procedures with ionizing radiation requires a medical justification based on the risk-benefit relationship for the patient. According to Ministerial Order No....

All the clinical information described in the requests for imaging tests with ionizing radiation from a public teaching hospital in Brazil since January 2016 were evaluated. The information considered sufficient to carry out the examinations were classified as proper justifications. In June / 2016, training in radiological protection was started at the requesting services. As of September / 2016, clinical information with less than 15 characters were not anymore accepted in the electronic exam request system.

In June / 2016, training in radiological protection was started for 247 physicians requesting examinations. In the period between May 2016 and September 2016 the percentage of inadequate clinical information was reduced from 20.6% to 2.4%. In the following months of 2016 the rate remained below 1% (Fig 1). The remaining months of 2017 and 2018 remained below 3%. The educational system, audits and control of the radiological justification implemented optimized the radiological protection, forcing the requesting doctor to describe properly and with enough clinical...

Juliana Monteiro Goulart1,2, Ronaldo Lucena1,2 , Alexandre Bacelar1,2 , Ana Lucia Pinto1,2 1 Serviço de Física Médica e Radioproteção-Hospital de Clínicas de Porto Alegre, Porto Alegre, Brasil. 2 LABRAD-Laboratório de Imagens Médicas e Radioproteção, Porto Alegre, Brasil.

[1] Jeong W, Baek J, Jung S, Do K, Yong H, Kim M-J, Choi M, Lee M, Choi S, et al. (2015) Imaging Guidelines for Enhancing Justifications for Radiologic Studies. J Korean Med Sci 31(Suppl 1):S38–S44 [2] Malone, Guleria, Craven, journal of … H (2012) Justification of diagnostic medical exposures: some practical issues. Report of an International Atomic Energy Agency Consultation. [3] Barron D, Spiegel T, Katzman GL, Haas K, Ali S (2018) Improving Clinical Information on Head CT Requisitions From the Emergency Department to...