H. Naseem2, P. Montgomery3, K. D. Bass1,2 1State University Of New York At Buffalo,Department Of Surgery, Jacobs School Of Medicine And Biomedical Sciences,Buffalo, NY, USA 2Women And Children’s Hospital Of Buffalo,Department Of Pediatric Surgery,Buffalo, NY, USA 3Women And Children’s Hospital Of Buffalo,Department Of Pediatric Radiology,Buffalo, NY, USA
Introduction: Radiation safety has been a concern in pediatric trauma with recent efforts at reducing computed tomography (CT) imaging. A previous study at our institurion showed an inverse relationship between age group and effective dose (ED). Our purpose was to evaluate current data for changes in the trend.
Methods: Retrospective review of the institutional trauma registry for patients who received computed tomography (CT) imaging from 1/1/2013 to 6/30/2014. Variables collected were age, gender, CT dose length product and body area scanned. Effective dose (ED) was calculated for five age groups. Factorial ANOVA analysis was used to calculate statistical significance.
Results: There were 312 patients that met criteria and 415 CT scans: 86 abdomen/pelvis, 21 chest, 36 facial, 259 head, and 13 neck scans. The ED for chest scans was 6.52±4.38 mSv and 0.57±0.38 mSv for facial scans (p<0.001). The ED was highest in the large child age group with a mean of 3.14±3.34 mSv and lowest in the toddler age group with a mean of 1.50±0.98 (p<0.001). In comparison to data from 2008-2011, the overall ED was lower across all age groups and showed an inverse relationship to the previous trend of higher ED in younger patients, especially noted in CT abdomen/pelvis (Fig 1).
Conclusion: There was a direct relationship between age and effective dose contradictory to the previous data. Overall effective dose radiation was also lower for CT scans compared to previous data. Concerted efforts of justification, optimization, and documentation lowered effective dose radiation in pediatric trauma patients.
