Speaker
Description
Introduction:
The study aims were: 1. to assess the incidence in one year (I100;1(%)), the cumulative incidence (I100;3(%)) and the period prevalence in three years (P100;3(%)) of patients fulfilling the condition of acquiring cumulative effective dose (CED)≥100 mSv in the health care centres providing CT examinations in Slovakia. 2. to quantify their variability among different centres 3. to test the feasibility of establishing RERLs on a nationwide level.
Materials & Methods:
The data were tracked during three consecutive years using CT dose index and dose-length-product values along with the patient’s unique ID. ED was calculated using conversion factors. Hospitals were stratified according to the number of beds in clinics (0), small (<200), medium (201-500) or large (>500) hospitals.
Results:
The database included 875,386 patients*year who underwent 1.269.906 CT exams in three years. No significant differences were found in I100;1(%), I100;3(%) or P100;3(%) among different hospital sizes. The I100;1(%) ranged from a 0% to 6,2%. The I100;3(%) ranged from 0,3% to 23,2% (Fig.1). The P100;3(%) ranged from 0.17% to 13,3%. A strong positive correlation was present between the third quartile values of yearly CED and I100;1(%) (r=0.84; R2=0.70; p<0.0001). RERL value, set as the 75th percentiles of the distributions of the 3rd quartiles of the yearly CED, amounted to 25.7 mSv in Slovakia.
Summary:
The management of patients with recurrent CT exposures is highly variable among hospitals and seems quite unrelated with the level of specialization of the institutions. The introduction and use of RERL might reduce such variability.
