Comparison of radiation doses exposed when working with radioactive substances of nurses working in nuclear medicine PET/CT (Positron emission tomography/ computerized tomography) and scitigraphy applications

Radioactive materials used in nuclear medicine cause the personnel to be exposed to radiation dose. Nurses working in nuclear medicine often give radioactive materials to patients intravenously. For this reason, nurses are directly exposed to the radiation dose. Radiopharmaceuticals with different half-lives and energies are used for scintigraphy and PET/CT imaging. It is known that Tc-99m has a half-life of 6 hours and an energy of 140 keV for scintigraphy shots. PET/CT scans are made with F-18, which has a half-life of approximately 110 minutes. While it is known that the PET/CT device emits positrons, the energy of these positrons is known to be 511 keV. For this reason, the personnel on duty think that they will be exposed to high radiation dose during PET/CT applications. On the other hand, due to the short half-life of the F-18 radionuclide, the number of patients is less than in scintigraphy applications. In other words, nurses working in scintigraphy applications give radioactive substances to more patients. This situation has enabled us to seek an answer to the question, "Do nurses who inject F-18 substance to patients for Pet/CT applications receive more radiation dose than nurses who inject Tc-99m for scintigraphy applications?". In our study, collar and ring dosimetry results of two nurses working in the PET/CT department of Ankara City Hospital Nuclear Medicine Department and two nurses working in scintigraphy applications were compared. The collar and ring dosimetry results of four nurses for a total of 19 periods, starting from 2019 to the first period of 2022, were statistically analyzed. Collar and ring dosimetry results were obtained for both nurses performing PET/CT applications and nurses performing scintigraphy applications, a total of 156 data, 78 of which were separately available. These obtained data were analyzed using the SPSS statistical program and it was determined that there was a statistically significant difference between the dosimetry results. According to this difference, it has been seen that although the number of patients is low, the radiation dose exposure of the nurses working during PET/CT applications is actually high. Keywords: dosimeter, nuclear medicine, radiation dose exposure, radiation protection