The status of radiation protection and control strategy for nuclear medicine workers and patients

Abstract

In diagnostic nuclear medicine, the used of radioactive drugs with ionizing radiation effect and may place nuclear medicine workers and patients at risk of infection in terms of health. In this review the global trends in diagnostic nuclear medicine modalities applied in medical procedure were introduced at first. And then the exposure dose of nuclear medicine workers and patients in different examination items were analyzed emphatically. The radiation protection status was evaluated based on the analysis. In recent years, the researches in nuclear medicine radiation protection showed that the annual effective dose of workers was less than yearly dose limit of occupational exposure. The effective dose was mainly from single photon radiopharmaceuticals labeled by 99Tcm for patients undergoing SPECT examinations. However for PET/CT examinations, the effective dose was mainly from CT procedure. It could significantly reduce the effective dose to the patients when the activity of radioactive drugs and CT acquisition conditions were selected appropriately. Key words: Tomography, emission-computed, single-photon; Positron-emission tomography; Tomography, X-ray computed; Nuclear medicine; Radiation protection; Absorbed dose