Radiation exposure of nuclear medicine

Nuclear medicine technologists are potentially exposed to ionising radiation while carrying out a variety of tasks associated with each nuclear medicine procedure. We measured external radiation doses to staff members working in our Nuclear Medicine department over a 1-month period, to assess the possible radiation doses to them.Radiation doses to a nuclear medicine physician (dynamic injections and exercise for myocardial perfusion scintigraphy) ,a radiographer (set up patient for gated mibi, help patient off bed for image acqusition), a nurse (injection of radiopharmaceutical to the patient, prepare patient for exercisse),a radiopharmasist (individual dose preparation and elution of Tc-99m generators) and a cleaning staff (cleaning the patients toilets and radioactive wastes) were measured by digital dosimeters. As a summary, we measured radiation exposure of 5 people everyday during one month. The dosemeters was worn by the technologist at waist level, on the anterior surface of the body. The average dose per each task were calculated for all staff.After correction of natural bacground dose, the mean 1- month radiation dose to the physician, radiographer, nurse, radiopharmasist and cleaning staff were determined as 0.127, 0.118, 0.073, 0.102 and 0.33 mSv, respectively.This 1 month study showed that effective radiation doses to nuclear medicine department staff members were within permissible level. But further studies including large number of Nuclear Medicine staff from different departments are needed in order to take necessary precautions for decreasing their radiaiton exposure.