Keywords:
Paediatric, Radioprotection / Radiation dose, Trauma, CT, Radiation safety, Acute, Quality assurance
Authors:
S. Gentile, L. Borgwardt, L. H. Andersen, O. Rosenkrantz, S. S. Rudolph, C. Ewertsen
DOI:
10.26044/esi2024/ESI-13670
Methods or background
All children (age <18 years) admitted to our major trauma center (tertiary referral center), were identified retrospectively. Patients transferred to our center from smaller centers were excluded from this analysis. The primary variables were age, injury mechanism, body areas scanned and radiation doses. The follow-up period was one month from date of arrival at our trauma center. We defined having an injury in a body area as an Abbreviated Injury Score (AIS) severity ≥2. The score can be between 1 and 6, where 6 is fatal. Radiation doses are compared to the European diagnostic reference levels (DRLs) [1]. Radiation doses of CT thorax-abdomen were compared to the dose length product (DLP) of CT abdomen together with DLP of CT thorax from the European DRLs. We converted the age of our patients to weight groups, as advised in the European guidelines (table 7.2 in [1]), as the weight was not available for all our patients. We compared doses to the European DRLs using two-sided Wilcoxon signed-rank test with a significance level of 5% for age/weight groups with at least 10 patients (p. 43 in [1]). Data were collected from the RIS/PACS system and our local Trauma Register in a REDCap database.