Patient radiation exposure for endovascular deep venous interventions

The study aimed to assess the cumulative radiation exposure from preoperative, periprocedural, and follow-up imaging to patients who underwent common endovascular deep venous interventions for acute and chronic central venous outflow obstructive diseases; namely, deep vein thrombosis (DVT) thrombolysis, unilateral chronic iliofemoral venous stenting, and inferior vena cava (IVC) reconstruction in a single center.

Patients who had DVT thrombolysis of upper extremity (UE) DVT and lower extremity (LE) DVT, unilateral chronic iliofemoral venous stenting, and endovascular IVC reconstruction between May 1, 2012, and July 31, 2017, in a single unit were retrospectively reviewed. Demographic data, anatomic DVT, imaging, technical details of the index procedure, follow-up, and radiation exposure measured in dose-length product, dose-area product (DAP), and fluoroscopy time (FT) from related computed tomography scans and interventions were analyzed. Mann-Whitney U tests were performed to assess for significance of differences between subgroups. A P value of less than .05 was considered significant.

In total, 20 UE DVT thrombolysis, 91 LE DVT thrombolysis, 56 unilateral chronic iliofemoral venous stenting, and 39 endovascular IVC reconstruction patients were included in the study, with the following median ages: 39 years (range, 20-67 years), 44 years (range, 15-78 years), 45 years (range, 20-80 years), and 35 years (range, 18 -73 years), respectively. The median cumulative DAP for the index DVT thrombolysis was 9.2 Gycm² (range, 0.2-176.0 Gycm²) for LE DVT and 2.0 Gycm² (range, 0.1-11.7 Gycm²) for UE DVT (P < .0001). The median cumulative FT for the index thrombolysis was 981 seconds (range, 20-4890 seconds) and 837 seconds (range, 19-2895 seconds) for LE DVT and UE DVT, respectively (P = .18). For unilateral chronic iliofemoral venous stenting, the median cumulative DAP and FT were 32.4 Gycm² (range, 0.1-289.6 Gycm²) and 660 seconds (range, 246-4200 seconds), respectively. Meanwhile, the median cumulative DAP and FT for the endovascular IVC reconstruction were 60.8 Gycm² (range, 2.5-269.1 Gycm²) and 2846 seconds (range, 836-11682 seconds), respectively. The median DAP for secondary procedures during follow-up was 6.6 Gycm² (range, 0.8 186.5 Gycm²), 1.9 Gycm² (range, 0.2-111.7 Gycm²), and 24.3 Gycm² (range, 0.2-157.5 Gycm²) for LE DVT thrombolysis, unilateral chronic iliofemoral venous stenting, and endovascular IVC reconstruction, respectively.

Patient radiation exposure for endovascular deep venous interventions for central venous outflow obstruction measured in DAP and FT seemed to be less than and at most similar to anatomically comparable arterial interventions in the literature. However, these patients were usually much younger than those with arterial diseases and may need secondary interventions involving further radiation exposure in their lifetime.