Congress:
EuroSafe Imaging 2021
Keywords:
Interventional non-vascular, Radiation physics, Radioprotection / Radiation dose, Fluoroscopy, Dosimetry, Radiation safety, Dosimetric comparison
Authors:
P. GARCIA CASTAÑON, P. Botella Faus, S. HONORATO HERNANDEZ, R. FAYOS-SOLA CAPILLA, P. Rodriguez Carnero, C. PRIETO MARTIN
DOI:
10.26044/esi2021/ESI-11875
Purpose or learning objective
The use of fluoroscopy has widespread in operating theatres, becoming essential in the daily practice of different surgical departments (1).
C-arm units are portable and allow to perform multiple different fluoroscopic examinations outside the radiology department. Its use is increasing rapidly as surgery changes to minimal-access surgery. With less direct visualization, surgery is being conducted with fluoroscopic guidance (2). Medical specialties that benefit from the use of fluoroscopy include orthopaedic surgery, neurosurgery, pain units, urology, endoscopy, cardiology…
Being outside radiology departments and not connected to the PACS and dose management systems, makes it difficult and time consuming to perform assessment of doses in that practices, in fact very few publications assess patient doses in surgical procedures conducted with fluoroscopic images outside radiology departments, and most of them focus in orthopaedic surgeries (3–6).
New Directive Euratom 2013/59 (7), recently transposed into Spanish legislation (8), encourages the establishment of local diagnostic reference levels (DRLs) wherever there are no national or international DRLs, as a crucial part of the optimisation process of medical exposure to patients. This optimization tool is especially important to implement in high dose practices and also for the most common procedures.
The purpose of this study is to assess the level of patient radiation dose received in fluoroscopic examinations of different specialties and establish local DRLs to start optimization processes.