3. Shielding
Every member of the surgical team should wear lead aprons, which
protect wearers against 95% of radiation scatter. Staff members who
need to be adjacent to the OR table should also wear thyroid shields
and leaded glasses. Eye and thyroid protection are optional for
staffers in the room who generally are more than 6 feet away from the
table.
The annual allowable radiation exposure is 50 millisieverts. The
ALARA Level 1 threshold is 5 millisieverts — 10% of the annual limit.
That's the pay-attention threshold. The ALARA Level 2 threshold is
15 millisieverts, or 30% of the annual limit. That's the investigational
threshold where you're going to have to find out what your team has
been doing to get that kind of exposure, which shouldn't be happen-
ing if they've been following good safety practices.
Here at Yale New Haven Hospital, which has thousands of operating
room staff members, we give radiation dosimeters — which measure
exposure levels — to only about 1,000 workers, the ones who we
think are most likely to have radiation exposure of any significance.
Smaller hospitals and freestanding ambulatory surgery centers don't
have professional health physics experts on staff, so they often give
dosimeters (also called film badges) to all members of the clinical
team.
1 6 • O U T PA T I E N T S U R G E R Y M A G A Z I N E • O C T O B E R 2 0 1 9
Got a question about imaging safety? Radiation professionals can
be consulted at the Health Physics Society at hps.org. Click on the
"Ask the Experts" section at the top of the website, where you can
browse answers from previously asked questions or submit a new
one. Within a week, an expert from your region will post an
answer.
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