Yavapai Regional Medical Center (YRMC) and Prescott Radiologists work together to “ensure that everyone [in our community] receives excellent and accurate imaging studies,” said Dr. Brian Kimball, a radiologist with Prescott Radiologists and the hospital’s radiation safety officer.
There is no doubt about it: Diagnostic and interventional imaging such as X-rays, fluoroscopy and CT scans saves lives. However, when using these tools, patients are exposed to radiation. These particles penetrate the body tissues so that radiologists can quickly and accurately pinpoint diseases and illnesses and make sure patients receive the most appropriate treatments in a timely manner.
In our everyday lives, we are surrounded by natural and cosmic radiation sources. Radiation is measured in milisieverts and the average American is exposed to about 3 millisieverts per year. That number increases by about 1.5 millisieverts if we live in higher elevations. When we fly on airplanes, we are exposed to about 0.03 millisieverts. The highest amount of radiation we are exposed to each day is the radon gas in our homes – about 2 millisieverts each year. All of these numbers vary, depending on where we live in the country.
One chest X-ray is approximately the equivalent of 10 days’ worth of radiation exposure from natural sources.
Because of this higher level of radiation exposure, YRMC and Prescott Radiologists work together to ensure that patients receive the least amount of radiation exposure possible. They follow the Image Wisely and Image Gently safety initiatives for adults and children, respectively, which “help provide quality imaging studies at reasonably low radiation levels,” said Dr. Kimball.
The Image Gently Alliance works to ensure that children are protected from overexposure to radiation by lowering the dosing on imaging equipment. The alliance advocates for children and asks that the medical community makes sure that children are not just treated as small adults and that doses are based on their actual size. For quality and accuracy, however, the dose needs to be appropriate.
The Image Wisely program for adults acknowledges that the benefits of medical imaging do exceed its risks, but that there is a responsibility of the medical community to use imaging appropriately and not to use these tools in excess because of the potential long-term harm it can cause patients.
YRMC uses new dosing protocols that limit patients’ radiation exposure. Dr. Kimball explained, “It is called dose modulation. All CT scanners use a scout view in planning. These machines use the scout view to sense which tissues are dense and which tissues are less than dense. The new technology then adjusts the radiation dose so that it uses lower doses of radiation in the less dense tissue. With the older technology, the technologist had to select a dose that would be constant over the whole scan. That dose had to be high enough to penetrate the denser tissues. So this new technology allows the higher doses where they are needed, but allows lower doses in areas that are less dense and that decreases the overall radiation dose.”
Dr. Kimball added, “And just a reminder that ultrasound and MRI do not use radiation, but are done with sound waves and magnetic signals, respectively.”
If you want to know more information about the radiation safety guidelines to which YRMC and Prescott Radiologists adhere, please contact Mary Sterling, director of imaging services for Yavapai Regional Medical Center, at 928-771-5141. QCBN
By Kristen Dicker