[ RadSafe ] Errors expose patients to radiation

[John Jacobus]

Barbara,
Thank you for questioning my response.  I was talking
about daily doses in diagnosis and therapy. 
Generally, teletherapy therapy doses are factionated
so that deliveries are less than 1 Sv, or rather 1 Gy,
per day.  The highest deliveries of TOTAL body
irradiations I am aware of are in the range of 0.3 to
10 Gy in a single session.  Even in most cases of
total body irradiation totaling 10 to 14 Gy, the doses
are fractionated seveal times a day over several days.
 For brachytherapy where tumor exposures may exceed 1
Gy, total body doses are usually not computed.  

I am usually more careful in my e-mail, but articles
like this get me agitated.  My experiences with
technologists, physicians and support staff do not
support the idea that they are cavalier or careless
about their work.  Further, the idea that risks should
be considered in light of public doses of 1 mSv is so
dumb.  As in occupational doses, medical doses are not
considered as part of the measured exposure.

I will try to be clearer in the future.

--- BLHamrick at aol.com wrote:
>  
> In a message dated 9/26/2005 12:19:56 P.M. Pacific
> Standard Time,  
> crispy_bird at yahoo.com writes:
> 
> Medical  exposures of 1 Sv are unusual, even in
> therapy. 
> 
> 
> I'm a little confused by this statement.  Doses in
> the 10-50 Sv range  to 
> targeted organs or tissue are not at all unusual in
> therapy, albeit not whole  
> body doses.  Did you mean to imply that limitation?
>  
> Barbara
> 


+++++++++++++++++++
"Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tired anything new."
-- Albert Einstein

-- John
John Jacobus, MS
Certified Health Physicist
e-mail:  crispy_bird at yahoo.com


		
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