Patient doses from noncardiac diagnostic and therapeutic interventional procedures

To determine the patient doses during noncardiac diagnostic and therapeutic interventional procedures carried out in a dedicated angiographic unit.

For 1,214 interventional procedures, the technique type, dose-area product (DAP), cumulative dose (CD), and fluoroscopy time were recorded. These procedures were classified into 23 categories (10 diagnostic and 13 therapeutic) that included nine to 259 patients each. For each category, descriptive statistical analysis was used to determine the characteristics of DAP, CD, and fluoroscopy time distributions. The statistical significance of the differences observed between categories in terms of DAP was assessed.

For the 23 categories studied, the median DAP values ranged from 0.2 to 176.8 Gycm(2). In comparison with the literature, the mean and median DAP values in this study were within reported ranges for eight categories, greater for three, and less for six, whereas for the remaining six categories no relevant data were found in the literature.

Overall, the results of this survey indicate that the techniques used by the interventionalists, the operation skills of radiation technologists, and the performance of the x-ray unit present no obvious deficiencies in terms of patient radiation protection. However, for those procedures in which lower DAP values were found in the literature, it should be further investigated whether patient doses could be reduced without degradation of the diagnostic and therapeutic outcomes.