Status of Radiation Protection of Patients in Developing Countries

Abstract

AbstractHow safe is the patient in developing countries and making patient safer has been the objective of the International Action Plan on Radiological Protection of Patients launched by the IAEA in 2002. This requires assessment and comparison of radiation doses to the patients undergoing diagnostic radiological examinations with reference levels without compromising on quality, finding how many patients are getting peak skin dose exceeding the threshold for erythema in interventional procedures (IP) and through this process creating awareness on radiation protection. A number of tools have been used namely; training courses, providing free training material developed in cooperation with international organizations and professional bodies, establishing a new website on radiation protection of patients (http://rpop.iaea.org), guidance documents, establishing networks and launching projects in over 80 countries. It is becoming clear that the patient doses (ESAK) in radiography examinations in many developing countries are generally within established diagnostic reference levels (DRL) but poor image quality is the root cause of higher patient doses, the situation with regard to computed tomography (CT) is different as many patients are receiving higher doses (DLP) than DRLs, in the case of interventional procedures like PTCA, many patients receive higher dose (KAP) than the currently known DRL and in mammography also there is need to achieve better optimization. There have been a number of success stories of optimization demonstrating reduction in patient doses in developing countries without compromising on image quality. With increased usage of high dose procedures in developing countries such as CT & IP and with fast changing technology that poses great challenge in implementing patient dose management, there is a greater need today to focus on patient protection.KeywordsRadiation protection developing countriespatient protectiondiagnostic radiologyinterventional proceduresmammographycomputed tomography