• John P Sheppard, Courtney Duong, Prasanth Romiyo, Daniel Azzam, Yasmine Alkhalid, Thien Nguyen, Diana Babayan, Carlito Lagman, Matthew Z Sun, Giyarpuram N Prashant, Joel S Beckett, and Isaac Yang.
• Department of Neurosurgery, David Geffen School of Medicine of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), Los Angeles, California, USA.
• World Neurosurg. 2020 Jan 1; 133: e308-e319.

ObjectiveWe performed a retrospective analysis in a cohort of 1185 patients at our institution who were identified as undergoing ≥1 head computed tomography (CT) examinations during their inpatient stay on the neurosurgery service, to quantify the number, type, and associated radiation burden of head CT procedures performed by the neurosurgery service.MethodsCT procedure records and radiology reports were obtained via database search and directly validated against records retrieved from manual chart review. Next, dosimetry data from the head CT procedures were extracted via automated text mining of electronic radiology reports.ResultsAmong 4510 identified adult head CT procedures, 88% were standard head CT examinations. A total of 3.65 ± 3.60 head CT scans were performed during an average adult admission. The most common primary diagnoses were neoplasms, trauma, and other hemorrhage. The median cumulative effective dose per admission was 5.66 mSv (range, 1.06-84.5 mSv; mean, 8.56 ± 8.95 mSv). The median cumulative effective dose per patient was 6.4 mSv (range, 1.1-127 mSv; mean, 9.26 ± 10.0 mSv).ConclusionsThe median cumulative radiation burden from head CT imaging in our cohort equates approximately to a single chest CT scan, well within accepted limits for safe CT imaging in adults. Refined methods are needed to characterize the safety profile of the few pediatric patients identified in our study.Copyright © 2019. Published by Elsevier Inc.

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