We conducted a nationwide multicenter survey of various interventional radiology (IVR) procedures. Data were collected from 385 X-ray systems in 126 institutions, including 432 cine programs and 380 digital subtraction angiography (DSA) programs for diagnostic catheterization, percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI), ablation, transcatheter aortic valve implantation (TAVI), neurologic IVR, thorax IVR, abdominal IVR, and endovascular therapy (EVT). Fluoroscopic and cine dose rates were 10.1 mGy/min and 110.7 mGy/min, respectively, whereas for DSA programs, the median fluoroscopic and DSA dose rates were 8.0 mGy/min and 224.8 mGy/min, respectively. The DSA dose rate was more than twice the cine dose rate. The largest difference between dose rates was for diagnostic catheterization, which had a cine dose rate of 142.6 mGy/min and a fluoroscopic dose rate of 12.6 mGy/min (by a factor of 12.5), followed by EVT, which had a DSA dose rate of 216.0 mGy/min and a fluoroscopic dose rate of 7.7 mGy/min (by a factor of 29.6). The smallest difference between dose rates was for TAVI, which had a cine dose rate of 96.8 mGy/min and a fluoroscopic dose rate of 12.0 mGy/min (by a factor of 8.9), followed by neurologic IVR, which had a DSA dose rate of 227.9 mGy/min and a fluoroscopic dose rate of 9.6 mGy/min (by a factor of 22.6). Compared with the fluoroscopic dose rates, the cine dose rates were 9-13 times higher and the DSA dose rates were 22-30 times higher; the DSA dose rates were more than double the cine dose rates.
Keywords: air kerma at the patient entrance reference point; air kerma-area product; diagnostic reference levels (DRLs); fluoroscopic dose rate; interventional procedure.