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Nuclear medicine: workplace monitoring and internal occupational exposure during a ventilation/perfusion single-photon emission tomography

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Abstract

The administration of 99mTc-HDP to diagnose pulmonary thromboembolisms leads to the presence of 99mTc in the environment of a nuclear medicine department, which could pose a potential risk of internal contamination to medical staff. Therefore, air samples from the administration room, gamma camera room and corridor of such a department were taken for the purpose of performing a workplace monitoring program of the medical centre under study, with maximum activity values of 640 ± 30 kBq/m3, 1.5 ± 0.1 kBq/m3 and 54 ± 3 kBq/m3, respectively, being obtained. These results correspond to committed effective doses received by exposed employees, via inhalation, when one ventilation/perfusion single-photon emission tomography study was performed, of 0.7 μSv, 0.004 μSv and 0.2 μSv, respectively. As inhalation is the employees’ main exposure pathway to radio-aerosols, the internal dose of the nuclear medicine department’s medical staff was also evaluated via urine bioassay measurements. Nuclear medicine nurses showed the highest 99mTc activity in 24-h urine samples (2100 ± 130 Bq/day), resulting in a committed effective dose of 21 μSv for each diagnostic study performed. Even so, the performance of ventilation/perfusion diagnostic studies did not constitute a substantial radiological risk since the annual dose limit for exposed employees was not exceeded.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the staff of the Department de Medicina Nuclear and the Servei de Protecció Radiològica i Física Mèdica at the Hospital Universitari Sant Joan de Reus for their help and collaboration. They are also extremely grateful to the Consorci d’Aigües de Tarragona for their support.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Departament de Química Analítica i Química Orgànica, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Unitat de Radioquímica Ambiental i Sanitaria (URAIS), Consorci d’Aigües de Tarragona (CAT), Carretera Nacional 340, Km. 1094, 43895, L’Ampolla, Tarragona, Spain

    J. Martínez, T. Baciu, A. Peñalver, C. Aguilar & F. Borrull

  2. Servei de Protecció Radiològica i Física Mèdica, Hospital Universitari Sant Joan de Reus, Av. del Dr Josep Laporte, 2, 43204, Reus, Spain

    M. Artigues

  3. Departament de Medicina Nuclear, Hospital Universitari Sant Joan de Reus, Av. del Dr Josep Laporte, 2, 43204, Reus, Spain

    M. Danús

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  1. J. Martínez
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  2. T. Baciu
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  3. M. Artigues
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Correspondence to C. Aguilar.

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Martínez, J., Baciu, T., Artigues, M. et al. Nuclear medicine: workplace monitoring and internal occupational exposure during a ventilation/perfusion single-photon emission tomography. Radiat Environ Biophys 58, 407–415 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00411-019-00798-x

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