[ RadSafe ] President's Cancer Panel

[Dahlskog, Leif]

Just skimming through this report when this caught my eye (amongst other
statements).

In Recommendation 7 of the report (Actions must be taken to minimize
radiation exposure from medical sources). 

"Referring physicians are responsible for discussing with the patient
the balance of benefit and risk associated with each imaging or nuclear
medicine procedure being recommended."

Ok, I agree.

But 

"An educational/decision-making tool that considers each patient's
cumulative lifetime radiation exposure should be developed to facilitate
these provider-patient communications."

Is the suggestion that the referring physician should use the
"educational/decision-making tool" with patients cumulative lifetime
dose when applying the justification principle for referring for a
procedure?  If it is, does anyone have a problem with this?  I would
have though that if a medical procedure was justified (by the referring
physician), it should be justified on the basis of risk from that
particular procedure, not from the risk arising from cumulative dose
even if that patient's dose history was available. Perhaps the emphasis
is meant to be on the educational rather than the decision-making tool.

My thoughts only.



Leif Dahlskog
Radiation Health Branch
Department of Health, Western Australia


-----Original Message-----
From: radsafe-bounces at agni.phys.iit.edu
[mailto:radsafe-bounces at agni.phys.iit.edu] On Behalf Of Glenn R.
Marshall
Sent: Thursday, 6 May 2010 10:28 PM
To: radsafe at health.phys.iit.edu
Subject: [ RadSafe ] President's Cancer Panel

Please don't shoot the messenger.  Before you read it, I strongly advise
you to stock up on barf bags.  Link below:

http://deainfo.nci.nih.gov/advisory/pcp/pcp08-09rpt/PCP_Report_08-09_508
.pdf


Glenn Marshall, CHP, RRPT

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