Informed consent on the use of ionizing radiation in radiodiagnostic procedures: legal framework in Brazil and worldwide

This study is part of an extension project developed at Federal university of Rio de Janeiro by professors and undergraduate students in Medical Physics. The goal is to perform a survey of laws (national and international), standards or recommendations issued by the competent authorities, directly or indirectly, about patient's rights to be informed about risks and benefits in hospital practices based on ionizing radiation. and also about the right to refuse the procedures prescribed, through a formal document (informed consent) The survey of the legal framework (national and international) on the patient's right to information was carried online using the keywords ⁱnformed consent^{, i}nformed consent to ionizing radiation^{, i}nformed consent in radiotherapy and ⁱnformed consent radiodiagnosis^. Documents from the countries of the European Union, United Kingdom, Mexico, El Salvador, Colombia and Brazil discussing this theme were found. After analyzing all the material collected, we highlight the main aspects and similarities of each standard. In addition, literature searches were carried out discussing the communication of the risk of using ionizing radiation in medical procedures. We found that there is no consensus on the part of the scientific community on the need to inform or not about the risks attributed to ionizing radiation in procedures involving low doses. This is attributed to the fact that there is no well-defined relationship between low doses and the possible stochastic effects they can cause. The next phases of the project, which are already underway, consist of the application of questionnaires to provide an overview of the level of information of the public and health professionals in Radiodiagnosis, Nuclear Medicine and Radiotherapy areas on the risks and benefits of the use of ionizing radiation and the elaboration of informative pamphlets on the risks and benefits of the use of ionizing radiation in medicine for dissemination. (author)