Task-specific monitoring of nuclear medicine technologists' radiation exposure

Many studies have demonstrated that the exposure of nuclear medicine technologists arises primarily from radioactive patients rather than from preparation of radiopharmaceuticals. However, in order to devise strategies to reduce staff exposure, it is necessary to identify the specific tasks within each procedure that result in the highest radiation doses. An ESM Eberline FH41B-10 radiation dosemeter, which records the ambient dose equivalent rate, was used to monitor the radiation exposure of a technologist and to record the dose rate in microSv per hour every 32 s throughout a working day. The technologist recorded the procedures that were being performed so that the procedures that resulted in higher doses could be identified clearly. The measured doses clearly showed that the major contributions to the technologist's dose were the following: (1) transferring incapacitated patients from the imaging table to a hospital trolley; (2) difficult injections without syringe shields; and (3) setting up patients for gated myocardial scans. The average dose to the technologist from transferring patients after a bone scan was 0.54 microSv, 40% of the total dose of 1.3 microSv for the complete bone scan procedure. The average dose received injecting 900 MBq of 99Tcm-HDP using a tungsten syringe shield was 0.57microSv, but the highest dose was 1.6 microSv, in a patient in whom the injection was difficult. A 0.5 mm lead apron was found to reduce the dose when setting up a patient for a gated stress 99Tcm-sestamibi myocardial scan by approximately a factor of 2. The average dose per patient for this task was reduced from 1.1 to 0.6 microSv. It is recommended that staff waiting for assistance with patient transfers stand away from the patient, that tungsten syringe shields be used for all radiopharmaceutical injections and that a 0.5 mm lead apron be worn when attending patients containing high activities of 99Tcm radiopharmaceuticals, such as those having myocardial imaging.