Background/introduction
Medical ionising radiation is the largest man made contributor to population dose.
TheEU requires that all member states determine population dose.
Dose awareness has become very prominent internationally in recent years with campaigns such as EUROSAFE.
The recent emergence of dose tracking software has provided a tool to measure,
analyze and report patient doses.
The Irish State health providers (the Health Service Executive or HSE) National Radiation Safety Committee recommended the use of this software to facilitate population dose measurement and scan optimisation in 2014....
Description of activity and work performed
An 8-question survey was created on the Survey Monkey platform.
This wasissued to 72 public and private medical institutions using ionizing radiation – for completion bythe radiation safety officer(within 6/52).
Respondents were asked about modalities used,
use of dose tracking software,
or alternative methods if not.
They were also asked if radiation protection protocols were in place for high dose procedures such as CT and Interventional Radiology/Cardiology and,
if so,
did dose monitoring inform patients’ aftercare.
46/72 (63%) of the institutions responded within the 6...
Conclusion and recommendations
Only a small number of Irish hospitals use Dose Tracking or Management software.
In general,
this is only for CT and interventional radiology/cardiology.
There isno consistency in recording of doses nationally.
A combination of electronic,
logbook,
+/- dose tracking software has been reported by survey respondents.
It is therefore difficult to make comparisons between sites and achieve consistent standards nationally.
MERU has carried out a survey of CT doses with clinically indicated DRLs in Ireland in 2017 [1] which was presented as a Eurosafe poster...
Personal/organisational information
This study was undertaken by MERU (Medical Exposure Radiation Unit) which was established by the Health Service Executive to regulate patient radiation protection practices in public and private radiology facilities in Ireland.
There are no financial disclosures or conflicts of interest.
References
Irish National 2017 CT Population and Dose Reference Level Survey: A Novel Gender and Aged Based Survey using Spreadsheet Templates and Clinical Indications.
Gilligan P.
et al.,
EuroSafe Imaging 2018 / ESI-0055 http://dx.doi.org/10.1594/esi2018/ESI-0055.
Dose Tracking Systems and their Role in Population Dose Monitoring and Optimisation in Ireland 2014.
Position Paper ,HSE MERU,
https://www.hse.ie/eng/about/who/qualityandpatientsafety/safepatientcare/medexpradiatonunit/population%20dose.html.
National survey on dose data analysis in computed tomography.Heilmaier C,Treier R,Merkle EM,Alkadhi H,Weishaupt D,Schindera S.Eur Radiol.2018 Dec;28(12):5044-5050.
NICE Guideline – Radiation dose monitoring software for medical imaging with ionising radiation.Published: October 2017....