Patient doses from radiographic procedures in St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Region

Evaluation of patient doses for the establishment of diagnostic reference levels should be performed using dedicated dose surveys. Objective. To assess patient doses from common radiographic procedures in medical facilities in St-Petersburg and the Leningrad Region. Materials and Methods: Data on standard radiographic protocols were collected from 33 medical facilities in St-Petersburg and 18 medical facilities in the Leningrad Region, covering 137 digital X-ray units in St-Petersburg and 53 digital and 62 analogue X-ray units in the Leningrad Region in 2023-2025 and 2019-2021, respectively. Data were collected for radiography of the skull, chest, cervical, thoracic and lumbosacral spine, abdomen and pelvis in frontal and lateral projections. Effective dose, entrance surface dose and calculated dose-area product were determined for each protocol. Results and Discussion: For all radiographic procedures, differences between minimum and maximum patient doses were pronounced and reached up to two orders of magnitude. Statistically significant differences between regional patient-dose samples were observed only for individual procedures; no differences in effective dose were found between digital X-ray units in St-Petersburg and the Leningrad Region. When digital and analogue X-ray units in the Leningrad Region were compared, a significant difference was observed only for entrance surface dose in posteroanterior chest radiography. Standard patient doses in the present study differed significantly from the results of previous dose surveys, both upwards and downwards, indicating the need for detailed systematic assessment of patient doses. The data obtained may be used to justify numerical values of regional diagnostic reference levels. Conclusion: The study results showed that diagnostic reference levels should be established at the regional level, while pooling samples for digital and analogue X-ray units is acceptable.

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