• Pain physician · Jan 2005

    Fluoroscopy radiation safety for spine interventional pain procedures in university teaching hospitals.

    • Yili Zhou, Natasha Singh, Salahadin Abdi, JiuHua Wu, Jennifer Crawford, and Fred A Furgang.
    • Department of Anesthesiology, Perioperative Medicine and Pain Management University of Miami School of Medicine, Florida, USA. yilizhoumd@yahoo.com
    • Pain Physician. 2005 Jan 1;8(1):49-53.

    BackgroundFluoroscopic guidance is frequently utilized in performing various types of interventional techniques. The major purpose of fluoroscopy is accurate needle placement to ensure target specificity and accurate delivery of the injected drug. However, radiation exposure may be associated with risks to physician, patient, and personnel. Multiple studies have evaluated the risk of radiation exposure and techniques to reduce the risk in private practice settings. However, the literature is scant in evaluating the risk of radiation exposure in teaching hospitals in university settings.ObjectiveTo evaluate safety and duration of radiation exposure for fluoroscopy guided interventional pain procedures in university pain clinics.Study DesignRetrospective, case study.MethodsThe data was reviewed from the fluoroscopy machines from March 2004 to April 2004 at two university pain clinics. Mean fluoroscopy time (FT), mean radiation dose per procedure, and utilization of pulsed fluoroscopy were analyzed.ResultsData of a total of 165 cases of spine injection procedures were collected. The mean fluoroscopy time for lumbar epidural steroid injection, facet joint block, sympathetic nerve block, sacroiliac joint injection, and discography were 46.6 +/- 4.2; 81.5 +/- 12.8; 64.4 +/- 11; 50.6 +/- 41.9 and 146.8 + 25.1 seconds respectively. There were significant differences in fluoroscopy exposure times and radiation dosage for epidural steroid injection among different teaching physicians. Pulsed fluoroscopy was used in less than 10% of cases.ConclusionThe results of this study show that the fluoroscopy exposure time for various interventional procedures performed in the university settings are significantly higher than the radiation exposure periods in private practice settings. This study also showed significant differences among physicians in the same university setting.

      Pubmed     Free full text   Copy Citation     Plaintext  

      Add institutional full text...

    Notes

     
    Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?
    300 characters remaining
    help        
    You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
    • Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as *italics*, _underline_ or **bold**.
    • Superscript can be denoted by <sup>text</sup> and subscript <sub>text</sub>.
    • Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines 1. 2. 3., hyphens - or asterisks *.
    • Links can be included with: [my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
    • Images can be included with: ![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
    • For footnotes use [^1](This is a footnote.) inline.
    • Or use an inline reference [^1] to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document [^1]: This is a long footnote..

    hide…

What will the 'Medical Journal of You' look like?

Start your free 21 day trial now.

We guarantee your privacy. Your email address will not be shared.