Program Information
Establishment of DRL and Dose Indicators for Optimization of Protectionin Pediatric CT in Saudi Arabia
A Al-Haj1*, A Lobriguito2 , (1) King Faisal Specialist Hospital & Research Centre, Riyadh, Central, (2) King Fahad Medical City, Riyadh, Central
Presentations
SU-F-I-35 (Sunday, July 31, 2016) 3:00 PM - 6:00 PM Room: Exhibit Hall
Purpose:To establish the national dose reference level for pediatric CT procedures in Saudi Arabia. It also aims to determine dose indicators that can be used for optimization of protection.
Methods:A retrospective study of patient demographic data, CT exposure parameters and dose indicators in DLP and CTDI volume for pediatric patients was undertaken. The CT procedures were chest, brain and abdomen. A total of 550 patients from 5 medical centers were included in the study. The patients were grouped into age groups of 0-1, 1-5, 5- 10 and 10-15 years old. The dose reference levels for each procedure were determined using the 75 percentile of all the recorded DLP values. The effective dose for each age group was estimated from the mean DLP per procedure. A dose conversion coefficient in effective dose per DLP for each age group per procedure was derived. Normalization of the mAs and CTD1 volume was done and analyzed for evaluating dose optimization.
Results:The DLP values vary from center to center for different age groups for the same procedure by a factor of about 2 to 4. Pooling all age categories, the DPL values are 42-400 mGy cm for chest, 500-1,900 mGy cm for brain and 40-850 mGy cm for abdomen. One of the factors that gave the high variation is the use of the adult protocol for some age groups especially for ages greater than 10. The effective dose of chest for 0 to 1 years old is higher than the 5 to 10 years by about 8percent.
Conclusion:The use of the DRL values, effective dose and dose conversion coefficient for each procedure are best indicators for procedures that need optimization of protection. There is a need to formulate a national guideline on the use of DRL for pediatric CT procedures.
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