Occupational eye dose to medical staff in various interventional cardiologic procedures: is the need for lead goggles the same in all groups of radiation workers?

Considering the increased use of interventional cardiologic procedures and concern about irradiation to the eyes, it is necessary to measure eye dose in radiation workers. The assessment of eye dose using collar dose is a routine but inaccurate method. Therefore this study was designed to measure eye dose in the radiation workers of various interventional cardiologic procedures. In this study eye dose was measured for left and right eyes in three groups of radiation workers in angiography ward of Afshar hospital in various procedures using TLD. Measurements were done separately for cardiologists, nurses and radio-technologists in 100 procedures. The nurses functioned as surgical assistants and were usually close to the table. The correlation of staff dose to exposure parameters was also investigated. Eye dose in physicians were higher than other staff in all procedures. Also the left eye dose was considerably higher than right one, especially for physicians. The median equivalent dose per procedure of left eye for physicians, nurses and radio-technologists were 7.4, 3.6, 1.4 µSv (PCI) and 3.2, 3.1, 1.3 µSv (Adhoc) and 3.2, 1.7, 1.1 µSv (CA), respectively. The annual left eye equivalent dose with (without) using lead goggles were 2.4 (15.3), 1.4 (2.2), 1.0 (1.1) mSv for physicians, nurses and radio-technologists, respectively. There were also a positive correlation between eye dose and KAP for procedures without lead goggles. The lead goggles showed lower protection effects for radio-technologists than other staff. Only 30% of physicians received a dose higher than 1/3 of the ICRP annual dose limit, therefor only physician eye dose should be monitored in catheterization labs.