Assessing radiation exposure to patients during endovascular treatment of chronic venous obstruction.

BACKGROUND: Post-thrombotic obstruction can be adequately treated by percutaneous transluminal angioplasty and stenting. This procedure is rapidly emerging as a minimally invasive alternative to traditional open surgical operations. However, the patient will be exposed to a significant amount of radiation during preoperative planning and operation. The aim of this study was to evaluate the amount of radiation exposure to patients during venous recanalization.

METHODS: All patients undergoing endovenous recanalization from February 2016 to February 2018 were included in this study. The operations were performed in an operating room using a mobile C-arm angiography system. Indirect parameters of cumulative air kerma, kerma-area product, and fluoroscopy time (FT) were recorded concurrently with direct measurements of dose (effective dose [ED]) in the pelvic and neck area using two electronic personal dosimetry devices. The direct measured doses were then correlated with indirect parameters provided by the imaging equipment manufacturers.

RESULTS: In total, 78 cases were included in the study. During a median operation time of 154.5 minutes (90-323 minutes), the median FT was 43.7 minutes (15.9-77.7 minutes). Body mass index did not correlate with FT or ED. ED correlated with duration of the intervention (r = 0.59) but better with FT, cumulative air kerma, and kerma-area product (r = 0.76, 0.94, and 1.00, respectively). No patients had evidence of radiation-induced skin injury.

CONCLUSIONS: Radiation exposure to patients during endovenous recanalization does not reach the threshold to have a deterministic effect. Indirect parameters of radiation exposure correlated with direct measurements of the ED. Direct dosimetry is likely to be an unnecessary effort for these types of procedures when indirect dose metrics are available.