Personal diary of radiation dosage; plea for a standardized system.

Abstract

I. PERSONAL RADIATION DIARIES This is a plea for the adoption of a nationally standardized personal radiation-diary system. The purpose of such a system would be to reduce to a readied exactness the composite previous irradiation record of any individual patient. We believe that such a diary is valuable for many reasons, the principal one being the cumulative biological effect of radiation. There is an ever-increasing use of radiation in its various forms by many types of specialists and practitioners, who may lack appreciation of the relative dangers of fluoroscopy in relation to film exposures, as exemplified in the table in Part II. The constant trend is to reduce the tolerance dose of x-rays, as witness the change in the past few years alone—from 0.2 to 0.1 r to 0.05 r per day, or 0.3 r per week. Furthermore, at present, there is lacking a readily available exact, uniform record