The Use of Cumulative Effective Dose - An Educational Debate
Presentations
TU-E-207-0 (Tuesday, 7/12/2022) 11:00 AM - 12:15 PM [Eastern Time (GMT-4)]
Room 207
Radiation dose has been recognized as a safety concern in medical procedures involving ionizing radiation. This has motivated extensive efforts, many of them led by medical physicists, to reduce and manage medical radiation exposures. However, a recent controversy has arisen involving repeated exposures of the same individual involving the possible stochastic effect of radiation. In occupational settings, radiation protection standards acknowledge and track cumulative radiation dose to radiation workers; repeated exposures matter. However, in patient care, each exposure is assumed to be subject to its own justification, thus incremental risk of an individual exam (as opposed to the cumulative risk of repeated exams) becomes the primary factor of practical relevance; it does not matter how many exposures you might have had previously when there is an immediate medical need at hand need addressing. This, in fact, has been the subject of a recent policy statement by the AAPM and the ACR. Nevertheless, the cumulative risk remains a subject of debate when it comes to patients that are expected to receive repeated exposures as a part of their clinical care, and when justification is viewed beyond a single incremental procedure. This debate aims to unpack the issues surrounding this topic by two scientists who have vested their intellectual energy on the topic. We hope to have a relevant and intelligent conversation where we all learn new perspectives even though we might have figured out our minds already!
Learning Objectives:
1. Understand the issues and controversies surrounding cumulative radiation dose tracking in imaging care.
2. Understand the scenarios where tracking the cumulative radiation dose might be justified.
3. Understand the scenarios where tracking the cumulative radiation dose would be a disservice to the patient.
Handouts
- 175-63239-16291659-183806-784354229.pdf (Madan Rehani)
Keywords
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Taxonomy
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