Patient exposure to X-ray radiation during abdominal aorta and lower limb digital subtraction angiography

The main aim of this study was to find out what is the risk caused by ionizing radiation during digital subtraction angiography (DSA) for abdominal aorta and lower limb examinations. The study is based on a large group of patient data subjected to a complex analysis of fluoroscopy time, exposure time, air kerma values, and dose-area product (DAP). Measurements were performed on 449 patients with intra-arterial (IA DSA) contrast administration. Median DAP value for fluoroscopy was 5.4 Gy-cm2 and for exposure 51.7 Gy-cm2. On exposure the patients received 94% of the total DAP although this examination takes only 0.1% of the total examination time. For this reason, small changes in the exposure time may result in a considerable reduction in the radiation received by the patient. There was good correlation between DAP values and the fluoroscopy time (r=0.78), while the correlation between DAP and the exposure time was much poorer (r = 0.39). It was also found that gender was a differentiating factor neither both fluoroscopy (F[1, 449] = 0.01, p > 0.05) nor exposure time (F[1, 449]=0.42, p > 0.05). (author)