Assessment of the population effective dose from the diagnostic use of radiopharmaceuticals in Cuba

In an attempt to estimate the effective collective dose imparted to the population of Camaguey, Ciego de Avila, Las Tunas and Holguin territory, Cuba, has been made use of statistic from nuclear medicine examinations given to a population of 1.1 million inhabitants for the years 1995 through 1999. The average annual frequency of examinations was estimated to be 3.82 per 1000 population. The results show that nuclear medicine techniques of thyroid explorations with 43.73% and iodide uptake with 43.36% are the main techniques implicated in the relative contribution to the total annual effective collective dose which averaged 54.43 man·Sv for the studied period. Radiation risks for the Camaguey-Ciego de Avila population caused by nuclear medicine examinations in the period studied were calculated: the total number of fatal and non-fatal cancers was 16.33 and the number of serious hereditary disturbance was 3.54 as a result of 21073 nuclear medicine procedures. (author)