I am doing an audit on radiation doses from fluoroscopy. Some of the entrance skin doses (ESD) appear high to me. I wanted to seek an opinion to know how dangerous doses in the region between 100 mGy (0.1 Gy) to 500 mGy (0.5 Gy) from a single examination could be.
There are different thresholds for different deterministic effects. For fluoroscopy, skin injury is the effect of concern. The threshold for a transient erythema reaction is between 2 and 5 Gy skin dose and the redness would appear within two weeks. Skin doses greater than 5 Gy may result in a second erythema reaction or epilation that appears between two and eight weeks. For a single exam with a dose up to 0.5 Gy, there is no risk of skin injury. An article in Radiology discusses deterministic effects associated with fluoroscopically guided interventions.
Deirdre H. Elder, MS, CHP, CMLSO
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