title: Strategies for assessment of doses to the tips of the fingers in nuclear medicine.
abstract: Staff manipulating radiopharmaceuticals in radiopharmacies and nuclear medicine departments can receive significant radiation doses to the tips of their fingers. However, dosemeters for monitoring the fingers are frequently attached to a ring worn at the base of the finger and the doses recorded are significantly lower. Therefore a correction factor is required to estimate the dose to the finger tip from that recorded by a ring dosemeter. A survey of practices in UK nuclear medicine departments has been undertaken via a questionnaire, results of studies in the literature reporting ratios of doses to the tip and base of the finger reviewed, and patterns of finger exposure studied using an electronic dosemeter. The survey indicates that UK staff use vial and syringe shields for the majority of manipulations. Ratios between doses to the tip and base of the index finger reported in the literature vary between 2 and 6. Higher ratios appear to be associated with poor protection practices including not using syringe shields and use of a finger to support a syringe needle. Staff are recommended to wear dosemeters on the palmar side of the index finger of each hand. Dosemeters worn at the finger tips are ideal, but doses to the tips can be estimated from ring dosemeters worn on the index fingers, and factors that can be used for this are proposed. For staff who always use vial and syringe shields and never touch the syringe needle or vial a factor of 3 is appropriate. For staff who mostly use syringe shields and may occasionally support a needle during an injection, a factor of 4 can be used, while for others a factor of 6 should be applied.
authors.affiliation: Health Physics, Department of Clinical Physics, University of Glasgow, Health Physics, Gartnavel Royal Hospital, Glasgow, G12 0XH, UK.
authors.forename: C J
authors.initials: CJ
authors.lastname: Martin
mesh_terms: D005385:Fingers / Q000528:radiation effects*; D006801:Humans; D009683:Nuclear Medicine; D016273:Occupational Exposure / Q000032:analysis*; D011829:Radiation Dosage; D011874:Radiometry / Q000295:instrumentation*; D019275:Radiopharmaceuticals / Q000737:chemistry*; D018570:Risk Assessment; D012307:Risk Factors; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D006113:United Kingdom
chemical_list: D019275:Radiopharmaceuticals