Advanced radiological safety actions contributions, in a hemodynamics laboratory, in decreasing exposure profile of patients and technical staff

Brazilian legislation establishes that all medical radiodiagnostic equipment should be part of a quality assurance program within a radiological protection program. Thus, in 2008, a team at the Instituto de Cardiologia Rio Grande do Sul decided to undertake a pioneering study focused on the elaboration, application and evaluation of a set of advanced Radiological Safety actions. These actions were based on guidelines to the IAEA, ANVISA as well as AAPM, which culminated in six specific advanced actions. It should be noted that within each advanced action, one finds the following: quality control test, technical/ technological standardization, training, and dose setting. The set of advanced Radiological Safety actions are: 1 –Routines of special and differentiated calibration for the specific dose levels; 2 -Technical auditing routines to approve the equipment for use after preventive and corrective maintenance; 3 -Advanced training routines of radiological safety and technical standardization; 4 -Technological standardization routines -configuration of pre-selected protocols (low dose, no magnification, 10 frames/s); 5 -Advanced management of the dose settings/report issuing/creation of indicators/dose investigation/goal settings; 6 –Routines of special and differential calibration for the specific dose levels for the operating CINE MODE. The results we found after the implementation of the six medical physics advanced actions were: A) A reduction of 0.087 mSv/test to 0.022 mSv/test, which represents a 74.71% decrease in the occupational exposure index by examination; B) A decrease of 7.3% (2015) to 1.7%, which amounts to a 76.71% decrease in the percentage of procedures performed in the hemodynamics laboratory that extrapolated the critical dose of 2 Gy; C) An increase in the X-ray tube durability from 10 to 26 months,a 160% improvement in the useful life of the tube. (author)