Patient dose in interventional radiology

This paper presents the estimation of dose-area product (DAP) received by 128 patients during different interventional radiological procedures in the Hospital Universitario de Salamanca, analyzing the differences between procedures classified as either vascular, non vascular, diagnostic or therapeutic. These differences can be assessed and reference dose levels can be established as a function of the variation of those parameters. Comparisons between dose-area product values obtained from this study are made with the data from nine other patient dose surveys, although explanations for some of the differences could not be obtained in some cases. The reference values in these procedures in our centre are very high due to a great number of images, so the clinical protocol should be changed to avoid this problem. (author)