Il calcolo automatico del rischio radiologico come supporto per la giustificazione di esami radiologici

Background
In the last decades patients exposure to the ionizing radiations for diagnostic examinations is increased in a great deal. Not always the prescriptions comply with the principle of "justification", which imposes to take into account the real utility and not replaceability of the examination.
Databases of Italian general practitioners usually record prescriptions of all radiological examinations of patients, when not admitted in hospital, and might allow to estimate radiological risk for each of them.

Aim
The aim is pointing the level of patients' exposure to ionizing radiations in the previous 5 years, through analysis of the commonly used database, in order to lead physicians to prescribe only necessary radiologic exams.

Design and methods
120 patients of an Italian practice are random extracted from the database. Patients are of both genders, ageing 15 to 64, without previous radiotherapy. All radiological examinations performed in the last 5 years are recorded in a special form, which has been created for computing in milliSiviert (mSv) the exposure to ionizing radiations.

Results
The calculated cumulative exposure of the patients shows very different amounts and a significant proportion of them (8 /120) exceeds twice as the recommended threshold. The knowledge of this data can help doctors to have an exact information about a relevant health problem, in order to apply the principle of justification and allow

Conclusions
Family doctor's database might easily automatically compute radiological risk for each patient and alert doctor when an x-Ray examination is being prescribed, giving him a crucial decisional support for its justification.