Setting up a dose team steering committee to supervise Dose Management Systems

Congress:

EuroSafe Imaging 2019

Poster Number:

ESI-0012

Type:

EuroSafe Imaging

Keywords:

Action 4 - Dose management systems, Action 8 - Radiation protection training and learning material, Radioprotection / Radiation dose, Management, CT, Mammography, Catheter arteriography, Computer Applications-General, Education and training

Authors:

D. Caramella, F. Falaschi, R. Cioni, P. Rossi, A. C. Traino, M. Giannelli, D. Pelliccia, F. Paolicchi

DOI:

10.26044/esi2019/ESI-0012

DOI-Link:

https://dx.doi.org/10.26044/esi2019/ESI-0012

Fig. 1: Screenshots from the DMS

Fig. 2: DMS installed in the A.T.N.O. (Area Toscana Nord Ovest)

Fig. 3: Angiographic procedure

Fig. 4: Audit

Fig. 5: Radiologists at work

Background/introduction

The availability ofDose Management Systems (DMS) allows radiology departments to track patient cumulative dose, to assess variability across their equipment, to identify dose outliers and to perform meaningful benchmarking (fig. 1). Starting from 2015 -at the EuroSafe poster exhibition- the University Hospital of Pisa stated its interest in devlopinga new DMS in cooperation with the regional area PACS vendor. The project officially started in 2016 at the SIRMNational Congress,when Prof. Caramella presented the outcome of a study on the value of DMS for achieving the...

Description of activity and work performed

The DMS has been progressively deployed in the hospitals covered by the regional PACS (Area Toscana Nord Ovest - A.T.N.O), allowing the systematic collection of dosimetric indices. The analysis of dose data are of fundamental importance in the evaluation of thedosimetric performanceof radiology departments and allows to take prompt actions when dose variationsappear to be unjustified. Furthermore, the DMS allows to create benchmarks to be used to optimize the procedures,to improve and maintaining protocols, and to avoid unnecessarily high radiation doses. The final aim is...

Conclusion and recommendations

The newly formed dose team steering committee will officially start its activities in 2019. As mentioned,its taskwill be the systematic review of the data extracted by the DMSs, to verify the compliance to national as well as local Diagnostic Reference Levels (DRLs). We believe that radiation protection of patients can be greatly enhanced by using DMS, provided that there is a committed team empowered by the Hospital leadership to oversee dose performances, and to suggest possible corrective actions. Such activity must be formally recognized and...

Personal/organisational information

All authorsare affiliated to the University Hospital of Pisa: Radiologists: Davide Caramella Fabio Falaschi Roberto Cioni Piercarlo Rossi Medical Physicists: Antonio ClaudioTraino Marco Giannelli Radiology Technicians: Davide Pelliccia Fabio Paolicchi

References

1 -A new method to evaluate the average absorbed dose in mammography and breast tomosynthesis 2 -Computed tomography imaging with the Adaptive Statistical Iterative Reconstruction (ASIR) algorithm: dependence of image quality on the blending level of reconstruction 3 -Radiation dose exposure in patients affected by lymphoma undergoing repeat CT examinations: how to manage the radiation dose variability 4 -Awareness of radiation protection and dose levels of imaging procedures among medical students, radiography students, and radiology residents at an academic hospital: Results of a comprehensive survey...