CT Radiation Dose

As everyone is aware, CT dose is a hot topic in the layperson media along the ACR and other Radiology journals. At Deaconess, we try very hard to keep up with current best practices. Recently, the CT Team Leader and myself listened in on a webinar regarding CT dose and how to reduce it. We actually realized during this national webinar, that we...in little Evansville, IN are doing what many larger institutions are doing. We've done alot surrounding radiation safety to ensure the public is safely receiving adequate CT studies.

We have done recently:

*Looked at all of our protocols-per scanner. One particular Radiologist has taken ownership and we run all of our protocols through him.

*Developed a CT Dose Audit tool. We actually take this audit tool and place it at the controls for the scanner and the technologist must record the dose from the CT Dose report that is attached to every CT exam and sent to PACS. This makes the technologist think about radiation dose as they audit.

*Radiologist helped determine "normal ranges" for the dose audits. In doing our audits, we found that our CT Sinus/Face protocol could be realistically tweaked down a bit on one particular scanner without sacrificing quality images.

*We've made a huge stride to shield as much as possible. Attached you will see an image using a breast shield. The breast shields are great and they cause very little artifact while saving the female breast tissue a huge dose.

*Radiologist is going to do a "Grand Rounds" at Deaconess for Medical Staff so that MD's are educated on CT Radiation dose and what exams are best for what diagnoses.

All of these things are actually reported out to our Radiation Safety Committee quarterly so that they know at what lengths our department is going to keep our patients safe!