The importance of addressing radiation dose
Reading Time: 2 minutes read
Radiation dose has long been an important industry topic. Recently, attention has broadened from the health field to prominent mainstream/consumer awareness. With more patients becoming sensitized to this topic, imaging professionals are fielding more dose-related questions—including those related to projection radiography.
Given the substantial benefits of medical imaging, it’s important for the imaging community to clearly communicate what we are doing to address this issue. At Carestream Health, we are actively working to help customers minimize and monitor patient dose. Our end goal is to enable our customers to get the best medical image required for diagnosis at the lowest possible exposure to the patient.
One important way we are contributing to dose reduction is by continuously developing better X-ray detectors that enable radiology professionals to reduce the exposure level when taking a digital X-ray—and consequently lessen patient dose—while still maintaining a very high quality image suitable for diagnosis. We also offer software tools that enable customers to track and report each patient X-ray exposure, as well as the number and type of exams that have been rejected or repeated. Use of these monitoring tools can lead to improved patient care through additional training that may help reduce patient dose and the need to repeat X-ray exams.
Equally important, we have also taken a leadership role within the scientific community to help develop a standardized radiation exposure index for digital radiography. This standard, now complete, is currently being implemented in our products and will help customers more accurately measure and track exposure. We are also active supporters of the Image Gently project—a campaign that encourages increased awareness of opportunities to lower radiation dose in pediatric radiology procedures.
What questions are you getting from patients regarding dose? Are you getting the tools you need from imaging suppliers to address this issue?
– Holly Hillberg, Chief Technology Officer, Carestream Health
Jeremy Enfinger
There will always be technological advancements that can be made to reduce radiation exposure including, but not limited to, software development, detector sensitivity, and user-friendliness of image acquisition alternatives. I think it is important to continue to educate and increase accountability for technologists in this arena. There has to be some individual responsibility assumed by the technologists themselves, as well as within institutions. States that do not have their own radiation protection guidelines need to develop them, while states that currently do should be fine-tuning them. Progress in this area needs to involve a community effort including everyone to the single technologist up to the state and national level, and it can do no worse than improve patient safety, hospital staff safety, and professionalism in our field.
carestreamhealth
Jeremy, you’ve hit on a two important points: increased training and accountability. Dose has always been an important issue that has generated discussion. The intensity of the recent discussion, we believe, will create added urgency to make improvements in both of these areas, especially education. This needs to extend to everyone within the imaging chain, from technology suppliers to end users of imaging equipment. Thanks for your thoughtful comment.
– Holly Hillberg, Carestream Health