Influence of quality assurance on patients dose reduction in some hospitals

The radiation dose received by patients undergoing chest radiography was included. 200 patients who attended these investigations in 10 hospitals in Iran were randomly selected from all ages groups and both female and male. Critically ill patients were excluded. This paper presents the work, which was implemented on 200 patients and evaluated using the entrance skin dose (ESD) in the posterior anterior (PA) chest projection measured directly at the center of the X-ray field. In addition, the machine room, and dark room parameters, as well as work practices and repeat rates were studied. The quality control (QC) parameters and the ESD before and after QC were evaluated utilizing an anthropomorphic phantom to define the optimal exposure condition at all hospitals. This research shows that after using the QC parameters and after optimization of the exposure conditions, the ESD was decreased by 42% on average. Also the quality of the radiographs generally increased. The reported method is easily implemented in any clinical situation where optimization of chest radiography is needed.