nuclear-news

And while these tests can — and do — save lives, health care providers are being advised to find new ways to reduce their patients’ exposure to repeated doses of harmful radiation.

Over the past two decades, exposure to radiation among U.S. patients because of increased use of diagnostic imaging has nearly doubled, according to the Joint Commission, an independent, nonprofit organization that accredits hospitals and other health care providers.

Any doctor can order a radiologic test at any time without knowing when the patient was last exposed or the extent of the exposure, the organization said in an alert this week to health care providers.

One way area hospitals are working together to help reduce overall radiation exposure is by transferring their patients’ diagnostic images electronically to Carle when patients are transferred there — so doctors can view the images that have already been done when the patients arrive, according to Dr. Juan Jimenez, co-director of general radiology and section chief of Body CT and PET-CT at Carle Physicians Group.

“It sort of eliminates the need to do repeat imaging,” he said.

There are now 13 area hospitals cooperating in this system, including Carle, the two Provena facilities in Urbana and Danville and hospitals in Decatur, Effingham, Gibson City, Lawrenceville, Mattoon, Monticello, Olney, Paris, Robinson and Watseka.

Jimenez said Carle has also changed its pediatric protocols “to make sure we’re administering the lowest dose.”

Education is another focus local providers use to reduce radiation exposure for patients, according to Jimenez and Lana Richmond, radiology manager at Christie Clinic.

That includes, for example, working with referring clinicians to make sure tests are administered appropriately and using other imaging techniques such as MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) or ultrasound that don’t use ionizing radiation…..

In February 2010, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced an initiative to reduce unnecessary radiation exposure from CT scans, nuclear medicine studies and fluoroscopy, saying these three types of procedures contribute the greatest exposure to patients and use much higher radiation doses than standard X-rays, dental X-rays and mammography.

The radiation dose from a CT scan of the abdomen equals the same dose as about 400 chest X-rays, and a dental X-ray uses about half the radiation of a chest X-ray, according to the FDA.

http://www.news-gazette.com/news/health/health-care/2011-08-28/hospitals-working-limit-radiation-exposure.html