Radiation Doses to Operators in Hepatobiliary Interventional Procedures.

Abstract

The primary aim of this study is to provide a summary of operators' radiation doses during hepatobiliary fluoroscopic guided procedures. In addition, patient dose in these procedures was also documented. A total of 283 transarterial chemoembolisation (TACE) and 302 biliary procedures, including 52 percutaneous transhepatic cholangiogram (PTC), 36 bilioplasty and 214 biliary catheter changes (BCC) performed over 14months, were included. Electronic personal dosimeters were used to measure operator radiation doses. Effective dose (E) was calculated using modified Niklason algorithm. Patient dose was measured as dose area product (DAP) and fluoroscopy time (FT). For TACE, E for radiologist ranged between 0 and 9.96µSv, for radiographer 0-0.99µSv and for nurse 0-4.65 µSv. The patient DAP and FT ranged between 1.5 and 421.9Gycm2 and 1.91-67.25min. For PTC, E for the radiologist ranged between 0.33 and 55.89µSv, for radiographer 0-38.61µSv and for nurse 0-3.18µSv. Patient DAP and FT ranged between 1.7 and 218.4Gycm2 and 2.07-71.53min. For bilioplasty, E ranged between 0.09 and 9.24µSv for radiologist, 0-0.84µSv for radiographer and 0-1.38 µSv for nurse. The patients' DAP and FT ranged from 0.7 to 52.54Gycm2 and 1.13-24.47min. For BCC, E ranged from 0 to 12.78 µSv for radiologist, 0-8.43µSv for radiographer and 0-4.05µSv for nurse. Patient DAP and FT ranged between 0.12 and 117.3Gycm2 and 0.57-15.83min. This study shows that doses to all operators performing hepatobiliary interventional procedures can be very low.