Computed Tomography Radiation Exposure among Urinary Tract Stone Patients at Tikuranbessa Specialized Hospital: A Retrospective Study
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Date
2021-08
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Addis Abeba University
Abstract
Background: Urinary tract stone is increasing dramatically in recent years so is the diagnostic
capability especially after the employment of abdominopelvic CT. The wide use of
abdominopelvic CT in the diagnosis, treatment planning, and follow-up of these patients raised
the issue of radiation exposure. For this reason, CT protocols that decrease the radiation dose
without decreasing the sensitivity and specificity of depicting stone have been implemented. The
common of these protocols is low dose CT despite its wide advocation there is wide variation in
CT protocols in different institutions. The CT protocol used in our country is not known and there
is no national guideline or recommendation for these types of patients, therefore, a wide variety of
protocols in different institutions is expected of which some may expose patients to unnecessary
radiation.
Objectives: To study the amount of radiation dose patients at tikuranbessa specialized hospital
patients with urinary tract stone disease receive in being evaluated by abdomen/pelvic CT
Methods: a retrospective cross-sectional was done February 1to august 31, 2021, at TASH in
patients who had their scan for urolithiasis or symptoms related to urolithiasis 1/07/202031/10/2020
G.C
are
included
until
the
sample
size
is
attained.
Data
were
collected
by
the
principal
investigator with a structured questioner that evaluates the number of CT they had The CT
characteristics like DLP CTDvol, date, and place the CT was taken. These data were analyzed by
statistical software SPSS version 22
Results: None of our patients have exposure more than 50msv per year or 100msv over 5 years.
3.6% of our patients have radiation exposure of more than 4msv, which is the standard for lowdose
CT.
The
median
radiation
exposure
is
1.27mSv
per
scan.
Exposure
factors
like
tube
current,
tube current product, dose length product, scan range all have similar values with almost null
interquartile range.Tube current product was found to have a statistically significant positive correlation with effective dose.All the scans that overpassed the low dose threshold(4msv) were
done outside TASH.
Conclusion: Our study showed that TASH’s low dose CT protocol for patients with urolithiasis
is well optimized and patients are not being overexposed but even with the limited data we have
non-TASH institutions are likely using non-optimized CT scans and patients may be a victim of
radiation overexposure for either diagnosis or follow of urolithiasis.
Description
Keywords
Urinary tract stone, Radiation dose patients