Evaluation of Radiation Exposure to Patients and Staff During Bone Scan Procedure

Abstract

Although bone scan is widely used as a frequent screening test; imaging of the skeleton using radioactive substances in Sudan using radio active substance in form of radiopharmaceuticals, standing to our knowledge, there are no studies aimed to evaluate the radiation doses to the staff due to performing these types of procedures; thus this study is consider a bonier in Sudan. The study aimed to evaluate the radiation doses received by the nuclear medicine staff during the whole body bone scan procedure and to estimate the organ doses during the entire procedures. The following study was carried out a 5 mCi of 99mTc-MDP follow intravenous injection and accumulated in bone rapidly. Anterior and posterior data acquisition achieved using MiE single head gamma camera. The study concerned on Three nuclear medicine staff with average 25 year, 77 kg weight, 177 cm height and 0.0024 BMI, positioned TLDs over their right hand and chest. The mean chest and hand doses for the three adult staff were 64.4 mGy, 6.3 mGy respectively. The staff organ doses received by the lung, bone marrow, colon and stomach were of magnitude of 0.77 mSv, and the skin dose is equal 0.032 mSv, hence only 15.4 mSv is received by the staffs' organ what is within the acceptable 50 mSv annual organ dose limit determined by ICRP. It had been observed that, chest doses was higher than hand doses because of direct handling with the injected patient and leaning the patient during submitting to scanning procedure. Increasing of staff and co-patient awareness about radiation safety and wearing lead apron inside any controlled area is recommended to enhance radiation protection in Al-Nilen diagnostic center.