Review of air kerma-area product, effective dose and dose conversion coefficients for non-cardiac interventional fluoroscopy procedures

Purpose To provide current data on average air kerma-area product (P-KA) and effective dose (E) for noncardiac interventional fluoroscopy procedures and suggested values of dose coefficients (DCE) for conversion of P-KA to estimates of effective dose. Methods A PubMed literature search covering the time period from 2006 to August 2019 was performed to obtain recent data on P-KA, E and DCE for interventional fluoroscopy procedures. Results There is very wide variation in the reported values of P-KA, E, and DCE in the literature. A number of factors are involved in this variability and the resultant uncertainty in average values of these dose quantities. Conclusions The values of P-KA, average E and suggested DCE presented here can be of use for comparison of the radiation detriment from different procedures and may be useful for categorizing detriment within an order of magnitude or so. They do not represent actual or expected radiation dose or detriment from any specific procedure or for a specific patient and should be not be used as such.