Frequency and collective effective dose equivalent of medical exposures

According to ICRP recommendation, medical exposure refers to the intentional exposure of patients for diagnostic and therapeutic purposes, and to the exposures resulting from the artificial replacement of body organs or functions. Since the objective of radiotherapy is to give a large amount of radiation dose to the patient to kill cancer cells, neither individual nor collective effective doses are directly relevant for comparisons with doses from other sources, not even with diagnostic procedures. For this reason, in present report, therapeutic uses of radiations and radiopharmaceuticals are not included in the medical exposures. Medical exposures in Japan have been investigated by the nationwide surveys on the type and the frequency of radiological procedures and by the dose determinations with phantom experiments or calculations since 1960. Present report reviews the frequency of diagnostic radiological procedures and the collective effective dose equivalents from these procedures, and excess deaths from the medical exposures in Japan. In 1986, the number of X-ray diagnostic examinations was estimated to be about 1.41 x 108. The preliminary result in 1991 shows the number will be about 1.8 x 108. The resultant collective effective dose equivalent from X-ray diagnosis in 1986 was about 1.84 x 105 person Sv. Consequently per Caput mean effective dose equivalent was about 1.48 mSv/person in 1986. The total collective effective dose equivalent from all the diagnostic radiological procedures in Japan was estimated to be about 2.96 x 105 person Sv/year. per Caput mean effective dose equivalent from the total diagnostic radiological procedures in Japan was evaluated to be about 2.3 mSv/year. This value may be comparable to the mean annual effective dose equivalent received from natural radiations for the worldwide population. Mean effective dose equivalent per diagnostic radiological examination was calculated to be about 1.00 mSv/examination. (author)