Exposure Conditions of Patients in Vascular Radiology

The goals of this study were to contribute to the set of reference data on patient exposure conditions in diagnostic and interventional vascular radiology, and to compare the results with published data. In a study in three hospitals 1308 common vascular procedures were monitored using an automatic data acquisition system that logged all relevant exposure parameters. Procedures monitored were classified according to the investigated body region and the method of catheterisation, resulting in 15 groups. Typical data for dose-area product (DAP), fluoroscopy time, X ray tube voltage and field size were derived from the large datasets. The DAP values from all three hospitals fall in the lower range of data reported by previous investigators, while values for fluoroscopy time belong to the midrange. It is recommended that dosimetry of complex procedures is performed in considerable detail to allow identification of the sources of differences in published patient doses. (author)