Radiation safety: minimise risks by properly positioning patients, equipment, and operators

Pilkington and colleagues discuss an important topic—radiation safety during fluoroscopy guided procedures—but overlook important aspects of fluoroscopy safety and misrepresent associated risks.1Cited studies estimate that the dose to the upper outer quadrant (UOQ) of operators’ breasts is highest when the operator stands beside the x ray tube with the fluoroscope positioned laterally.23 There, dose from scattered radiation is about 16 times higher than on the other side of the patient, because of increased scatter where the x ray beam enters the patient.4 Operator dose is substantially reduced just by standing on the image receptor side of the patient.Also, risks from low radiation doses are misrepresented. Several references are severely limited, lacking quantitative dose information.5678 Among radiological technologists, the only increased breast cancer incidence found was among technologists working before 1950, when occupational doses were substantially higher.9 Physicians with occupational radiation exposure had increased breast cancer risk but so did physicians…
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