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Technical note| Volume 76, P173-176, August 2020

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Estimates of the number of patients with high cumulative doses through recurrent CT exams in 35 OECD countries

Published:July 18, 2020DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejmp.2020.07.014
Estimates of the number of patients with high cumulative doses through recurrent CT exams in 35 OECD countries
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      Highlights

      • •
        Estimates were made of number of patients likely receiving cumulative effective dose ≥100 mSv in 5-years from CT exams.
      • •
        It results in about 2.5 million patients in 35 OECD countries.
      • •
        Countries were classified into Low: 0 to <1, Medium: 1 to <2 and High: ≥2 patients with CED ≥ 100 mSv/1000 population.
      • •
        There are 2 countries in Low, 24 in medium and 9 in high number group.
      • •
        Stake holders in patient radiation safety should attend to the issue of high doses to such large number of patients.

      Abstract

      Purpose

      To estimate the number of patients in OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) countries who receive a cumulative effective dose (CED) ≥ 100 mSv from recurrent computed tomography (CT) exams.

      Methods

      Taking into account recently published data on the number of CTs per patient and the fraction of patients with CED ≥ 100 mSv as well as country-specific data for the number of CT exams/1,000 population from OECD publication, this paper makes estimations for 35 OECD countries.

      Results

      The estimated total number of patients with CED ≥ 100 mSv for all 35 OECD countries combined in a 5-year period is around 2.5 million (2,493,685) in a population of 1.2 billion (1,176,641,900), i.e., 0.21% of the population. Expressed per 1,000 population, the range is from 0.51 for Finland to 2.94 for the US, a nearly six-fold difference. Countries with more than 2 patients with CED ≥ 100 mSv in a 5-yr period per 1,000 population are: Belgium, France, Iceland, Japan, Korea, Luxembourg, Portugal, Turkey, and US.

      Conclusions

      The first estimates of the number of patients likely receiving CED ≥ 100 mSv through recurrent CT exams in 35 OECD countries indicate that 2.5 million patients reach this level in a 5-year period. There is an urgent need for various stakeholders including medical physicists, referring physicians, health policy makers, manufacturers of CT equipment and epidemiologists to attend to the issue in the interest of patient radiation safety.

      Keywords

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      Article info

      Publication history

      Published online: July 18, 2020
      Accepted: July 10, 2020
      Received in revised form: June 26, 2020
      Received: May 30, 2020

      Identification

      DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejmp.2020.07.014

      Copyright

      © 2020 Associazione Italiana di Fisica Medica. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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