Risk estimation in association with diagnostic techniques in the nuclear medicine service of the Camaguey-Ciego de Avila territory

The nuclear medicine service at the Maria Curie Oncological Hospital, Camaguey, has experience over three decades in using radiopharmaceutical imaging agents for diagnostics. Although the clinical risk associated with these techniques is negligible, it is necessary to evaluate the effective dose administered to the patient due to the introduction of radioactive substances into the body. The study of the dose administered to the patient provides useful data for evaluating the detriment associated with this medical practice, its subsequent optimization and consequently, for minimizing the stochastic effects on the patient. The aim of our paper is to study the collective effective dose administered by the nuclear medicine service to Camaguey and Ciego de Avila population from 1995 to 1998 and the relative contribution to the total annual effective collective dose of the different diagnostic examinations. The studies were conducted on the basis of statistics from nuclear medicine examinations given to a population of 1102353 inhabitants since 1995. The results show that the nuclear medicine techniques of neck examinations with 1168.8 Sv.man (1.11 Sv/exploration), thyroid explorations with 119.6 Sv.man (55.5 mSv/exploration) and iodine uptake with 113.7 Sv.man (14.0 mSv/exploration) are the main techniques implicated in the relative contribution to the total annual effective collective dose of 1419.5 Sv.man. The risk estimation in association with diagnostic techniques in the nuclear medicine service is globally low (total detriment: 103.6 as a result of 16232 explorations), similar to other published data. (author)