Assessment of patient dose in routine digitalradiography in Iran

Background: the present study aimed to investigate patient dose in commonx-ray examinations to estimate effective dose in the digital radiography iniran. materials and methods: entrance surface dose (esd) was measuredbased on applied exposure parameters for the common actual examination;and then effective dose (ed) was calculated by use of pcxmc software. thestudy was conducted on 15358 patients in 85 x-ray rooms; and the necessarydata was collected for five age groups, 0-1 year, 1-5 years, 5-10 years, 10-15years old and adults in each projection. results: the ranges of esd and ed indifferent examinations for all the age groups are 0.02-10.20 mgy and 2.42-378.96 μsv respectively. conclusion: the effective dose as criteria can be usedto reduce patients' doses. the special considerations such as: adequatetraining of imaging staff; updating clinical audits; patient dose considerations;implementation of systematic and regular quality assurance and qualitycontrol programs in medical imaging departments should be taken intoaccount to optimize radiological practices.