Why measure radiation during cardiac catheterization?

✍ Scribed by Balter, Stephen

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1998
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 9 KB
• Volume: 43
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0098-6569
• DOI: 10.1002/(sici)1097-0304(199804)43:4<371::aid-ccd2>3.0.co;2-5

✦ Synopsis

The article by Hwang et al. in this issue of CCD reports experience with the use of a skin dose probe during diagnostic and interventional coronary procedures. The skin doses reported in their diagnostic series are all below the threshold for deterministic injury. The upper limits in their interventional series are around the threshold value. No skin changes were reported by any of their patients during a late telephone follow-up.

Skin injury should never be caused by a single diagnostic coronary angiogram. Practical safeguards include routine performance testing of the imaging equipment and reasonable attention to the expenditure of fluoroscopic times and cine frames.

Performance testing will occasionally identify excessive fluoroscopic or cinefluorographic dose rates attributable to worn-out or improperly adjusted equipment. Such testing is best done on an annual or more frequent basis.

Institutional and personal experience can be used to define typical operator performance in terms of fluoroscopic time and cine frame count. Tracking these values during a procedure can be used to control radiation in two distinct situations:

1. Participation in a case by the attending physician when the fellow exceeds predetermined cine or fluoroscopic times.