Radiological hazards to patients / interim report of the Committee.

  • Great Britain. Committee on Radiological Hazards to Patients.
Date:
1959
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Radiological hazards to patients / interim report of the Committee. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    4/24 (page 4)
    Work of the Committee 5. The Committee has set itself a twofold task: (a) We have undertaken a nation-wide survey of radiological procedures in order to estimate the present level of radiation to which the population is exposed. (6) At the same time we are considering the particular diagnostic and therapeutic procedures in present use, with the object of eliminating all unnecessary irradiation of the gonads and of the body generally. For this purpose we have set up eight specialist panels, a list of which is given in Appendix I. 6. Under (a) we have surveyed during a selected week the numbers and types of X-ray examinations, the number of films used and the apparatus available in all hospitals, chest clinics, dental surgeries and other institutions in Great Britain. A second census taken at a different time of the year was made on a random selection of a quarter of the National Health Service hospitals and chest clinics. This section of the work which provides part of the basis for assessing the radiation dose is now completed. At the same time measurements have been made of the dose received by patients under the varied circumstances of different types of radiological examination. These measurements comprise some 5,000 examinations in 140 hospitals and chest clinics chosen to give a representative selection of radiological work throughout all the 19 hospital regions of Great Britain. Because each examination on the average requires 3 X-ray exposures, some 15,000 measurements have been made by hospital physicists all over the country. There remains the very considerable task of computation before the final population dose can be derived and before relationships between dose and technique can be studied. A separate investigation is being carried out, including a three months’ survey, to estimate the contribution from radiotherapeutic procedures. 7. The results of surveys of this magnitude were not available to the Medical Research Council’s Committee when making their report in 1956. The plan on which our surveys are being made follows recommendations laid down by the International Commissions on Radiological Protection and on Radiological Units and Measurements’ and a technical account of this plan has already been published under the auspices of the Committee’. 8. The tasks outlined in paragraph 5 (a) and (5) are not yet conse but our work has been brought to a conclusion for one particular part of the total field of review, namely the use of X-rays for mass miniature radiography. Detailed investigations of this form of diagnostic radiology have given us new data on the amount of exposure involved and we have completed a review of the subject in the light of these figures. 9. The Committee considered it advisabie to produce an interim report without waiting until investigations over the whole field are completed. We do so because the hazards of ionizing radiation have been widely publicized and there is some danger that radiological examinations and radiotherapy of every kind will be viewed with unnecessary suspicion by the public at large so that the individual patient may come to harm through his reluctance to be X-rayed. In particular the value of mass miniature radiography is so great that it must not be curtailed without good cause and we think it important therefore to state now that these examinations, properly conducted, make a negligible contribution to the total radiation to which the population is exposed.