Computed Tomography Radiation Exposure among Urinary Tract Stone Patients at Tikuranbessa Specialized Hospital: A Retrospective Study
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Date
2021-08
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Addis Abeba University
Abstract
Background: Urinary tract stone is increasing dramatically in recent years so is the diagnosticcapability especially after the employment of abdominopelvic CT. The wide use of abdominopelvic CT in the diagnosis, treatment planning, and follow-up of these patients raisedthe issue of radiation exposure. For this reason, CT protocols that decrease the radiation dosewithout decreasing the sensitivity and specificity of depicting stone have been implemented. Thecommon of these protocols is low dose CT despite its wide advocation there is wide variation inCT protocols in different institutions. The CT protocol used in our country is not known and thereis no national guideline or recommendation for these types of patients, therefore, a wide variety ofprotocols 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 hospitalpatients 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 1/07/202031/10/2020G.Careincluded until the sample size isattained.Datawerecollectedbytheprincipalinvestigator with a structured questioner that evaluates the number of CT they had The CTcharacteristics like DLP CTDvol, date, and place the CT was taken. These data were analyzed bystatistical 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 lowdoseCT.Themedianradiationexposureis1.27mSvperscan.Exposurefactorsliketubecurrent,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 urolithiasisis 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 ofradiation overexposure for either diagnosis or follow of urolithiasis.
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Urinary tract stone, Radiation dose patients