1. Strategies to Reduce Radiation Exposure in Electrophysiology and Interventional Cardiology
- Author
-
Sandeep Shankar, Deepak Padmanabhan, Saurabh Ajit Deshpande, and Avinash Chandrashekharaiah
- Subjects
medicine.medical_specialty ,Interventional cardiology ,business.industry ,030204 cardiovascular system & hematology ,030218 nuclear medicine & medical imaging ,Radiation exposure ,03 medical and health sciences ,Electrophysiology ,0302 clinical medicine ,RC666-701 ,medicine ,Diseases of the circulatory (Cardiovascular) system ,Medical physics ,Cardiology and Cardiovascular Medicine ,business - Abstract
Clinical diagnosis sometimes involves the use of medical instruments that employ ionizing radiation. However, ionizing radiation exposure is a workplace hazard that goes undetected and is detrimental to patients and staff in the catheterization laboratory. Every possible effort should be made to reduce the amount of radiation, including scattered radiation. Implementing radiation dose feedback may have a role in reducing exposure. In medicine, it is important to estimate the potential biologic effects on, and the risk to, an individual. In general, implantation of cardiac resynchronization devices is associated with one of the highest operator exposure doses due to the proximity of the operator to the radiation source. All physicians should work on the principle of as low as reasonably achievable. Methods for reducing radiation exposure must be implemented in the catheterization laboratory. In this article, we review the available tools to lower the radiation exposure dose to the operator during diagnostic, interventional, and electrophysiological cardiac procedures.
- Published
- 2020