Survey of the interventional cardiology procedures in Italy.
Interventional cardiology procedures are increasing because they offer many advantages to patients compared with other techniques: therefore the Italian National Institution for Insurance against Accidents at Work decided to start a survey for monitoring the state-of-the-art regarding the professionals involved in those procedures. The survey covered six cardiology and medical physics Italian departments. Each centre was asked to record 10 examinations for five types of procedures: coronary angiography (CA), electrophysiology studies (ES), pacemaker implantation (PI), percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty (PTCA) and radiofrequency catheter ablation (RA). For each examination all the centres were requested to fill in a questionnaire containing information regarding the operator performing the examination, the patient and the procedure. A total of 290 examinations were recorded: 103 CA, 14 ES, 68 PI, 79 PTCA and 26 RA. As occupational doses are strongly related to patient doses, both patients and operators radiation dose data are reported. Ratios of maximum to minimum mean patient doses across the hospitals surveyed were 2.0, 3.9, 7.0, 1.8 and 1.4 for CA, ES, PI, PTCA and RA, respectively. The calculated rounded mean dose-area product values across all participating hospitals were comparable with other values reported in the literature. In general, specific radiation protection tools were used by all operators performing different procedures in all hospitals. A major issue in this survey was the absence of information about correlation between staff and patient doses in a single procedure: future studies could be more aimed to prospective goals where occupational exposures per procedure are monitored specifically.
Medical Physics Department, Azienda Ospedaliero-Universitaria Policlinico S. Orsola Malpighi, Bologna, Italy. gaetano.compagnone@aosp.bo.it
Gaetano
G
Compagnone
Francesco
F
Campanella
Sara
S
Domenichelli
Sergio
S
Lo Meo
Marco
M
Bonelli
Stefania
S
delle Canne
Paola
P
Isoardi
Michele
M
Marinaro
Massimo
M
Ursetta
Roberta
R
Curini
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D015906:Angioplasty, Balloon, Coronary; D002309:Cardiology; D017023:Coronary Angiography; D005260:Female; D005471:Fluoroscopy; D006306:Health Surveys; D006331:Heart Diseases / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging*; D006801:Humans; D007558:Italy; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D016273:Occupational Exposure; D011829:Radiation Dosage; D011834:Radiation Monitoring; D011835:Radiation Protection; D015641:Radiography, Interventional / Q000592:standards*; D055815:Young Adult