Patient Doses in Latin American Countries

This paper discusses the results of patient doses evaluated in the following countries in Latin American Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, Cuba, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Peru and Uruguay. The entrance air kerma values for PA/AP pediatric chest examinations and the average glandular dose in mammography projections are presented, as well as doses from CT procedures for pediatric and adult patients. The results of the PA/AP chest adult and pediatric procedures demonstrated a large variation of the exposure parameters used in the different countries of Latin America. Many were outside the recommend values of the European Commission. For chest pediatric examinations, the Ke values ranged from 0,01 to 0,16 mGy for the newborns and from 0,020 to 0,24 mGy for the infants. In mammography, the mean value of the average glandular dose was 2.28mGy, with a range of 0.5 to 6.42 mGy for the cranio-caudal projection; and 2.71 mGy, with a range of 0.55 to 10.65 mGy, for the medio-lateral-oblique projection. In CT, the Cw mean value for the head exam was approximately 25% higher for adults than for children. However in the other procedures, the Cw for adults was 3% lower than for children. The adult mean values of Cw and PKL for all procedures were lower than the DRL values recommended in the European guidelines