Romanian medical exposure to ionising radiation in 2012.

Medical exposure, the main source of artificial exposure, shows an increasing trend in the last years, manifested both by increasing the number of examinations with ionising radiation and by increasing the patient dose level. Annual results obtained for medical exposure to ionising radiation based on the data collected from Romanian hospitals are useful for the update of the national database and optimisation of diagnostic procedures in radiology and nuclear medicine. Medical exposure level is expressed in terms of annual collective dose and is evaluated from annual frequencies and the average effective dose per procedure for different types of radiological and nuclear medicine procedures. The Romanian hospitals reported during 2012 a number of 5,505,792 radiological examinations and 17,088 diagnostic procedures of nuclear medicine. Based on the data reported, the average effective doses and their contributions to the collective dose were evaluated. The main contributions to the collective dose of the radiological procedures are registered for CT abdomen and pelvis region, followed by thorax CT and head CT examinations. The next positions are fluoroscopic examination of the thorax and gastrointestinal disease and radiographic examination of the lumbar spine and thorax, which in spite of their low effective dose have an important contribution to the collective dose due to the large number of examinations. For nuclear medicine procedures, major contributions to collective dose are given by bone scintigraphy, followed by PET-CT and thyroid scintigraphy.