Staff dosimetry in interventional cardiology: survey on methods and level of exposure.

In interventional cardiac procedures, staff operates near the patient in a non-uniformly scattered radiation field. Consequently, workers may receive, over a period, relatively high radiation doses. The measurement of individual doses to personnel becomes critical due to the use of protective devices and, as a consequence of the large number of methods proposed to assess the effective dose, great variability in monitoring programmes is expected among European countries. SENTINEL consortium has conducted a survey on staff dosimetry methods and on the level of staff exposure in 12 European cardiac centres demonstrating the urgent need to harmonise dosimetry methods. From the dosimetry survey, constraint annual effective dose of 1.4 mSv and Hp(0.07) over the protective apron of 14 mSv are proposed for the optimisation the exposure the most-exposed operator.