Evaluation of occupational radiation dose in nuclear medicine: radiopharmaceutical administration to scintiscanning exams of myocardial perfusion

In nuclear medicine, workers directly involved in exams are constantly exposed to ionizing radiation. The procedure for administration of the radiopharmaceutical to the patient is one of the most critical times of exposure. In tests of myocardial perfusion scintigraphy (MPS) administration of radiopharmaceutical repeats the steps of rest and cardiac stress. In this study, we used a Geiger -Mueller detector for measuring occupational radiation doses for during the administration of technetium- 99m- sestamibi in MPS tests. In the evaluation, discriminated the stages of examination and related professional experience time to doses measures at home. It were followed 110 procedures at home (55 conducted by professionals with over 5 years experience and 55 conducted by professionals with less than 1 year of experience) and 55 effort procedures. The results showed that the rest of the procedure time and dose are related to the experience of the worker. More experienced workers were faster (mean: 43 ± 16 vs 67 ± 25 seconds / procedure), and therefore received lower doses (mean 0.57 ± 0.16 versus 0.80 ± 0.24 μSv / procedure), both with statistical significance (p <0.001). In step effort, there were procedures lasting longer (mean: 19 ± 2 minutes / procedure), which resulted in higher doses (mean 3.0 ± 0.6 μSv / procedure)