This study estimates usage and effective dose of diagnostic medical radiation in Korea, analyzes factors that affect high-level dose, provides proper information in diagnostic medical radiation dose, and supplies preliminary data of policy research of safety management for diagnostic medical radiation.
This study was carried out by extracting expense code of diagnostic medical radiation exams recorded in the medical expenses of Health Insurance Review & Assessment Service, analyzing National Health Insurance Service-National Sample Cohort from 2002 to 2010, extracting the number of diagnostic medical radiation exam, and then estimating exposure dose of diagnostic medical radiation of Korean people applying exposure dose recorded on the UNSCER 2008 report and other dose related resources.
Research findings are as follows : Number of diagnostic medical radiation exams is 69,910,896 in 2002 and 138,783,185 in 2010. The average examination case
per capita has almost doubled from 1.4 to 2.7. effective dose is 17296.68 person-Sv in 2002 and 55,101.84 person-Sv in 2010. The average effective dose per capita increased 3.2 times from 0.36 mSv to 1.10 mSv. Rate of diagnostic medical radiation exam is 86% for medical institutions, 14% for dental institutions respectively. Rate of effective dose in medical institutions accounts for 98%. Exam number ratio by rate of exam number account for 90% for X-ray exam. Rate of effective dose accounts for 57% for CT, 20% for X-ray, 8.8% for PET-CT, and 8.0% for angiography and interventional procedure. Gender ratio per exam is about 8% higher in women than men, but men account for higher percentage in relatively high effective dose exams, such as CT, angiography, interventional procedure, and dental examination. Age ratio per exam is increasing in most of the age groups excluding the under 10 group, and the age groups of 40s, 50s, and 60s show big increase in particular. As a result of analysis of yearly accumulative exposure dose, ratio of under 20 mSv/y of effective dose account for 98%, and ratio of under 20 mSv of effective dose within 9 years account for 92,5%. These findings show that most subjects were not exposed to a high-level dose. However, ratio of more than 100 mSv of exposure accounts for 0.1% and this is very low rate, but the number keeps increasing every year. Analysis result of factors affecting high-level diagnostic medical radiation exposure shows that males have a higher exposure than female. It increases with age, affluence, and Serious Diseases. Residential neighborhood size (city and country) and disability rating do not influence the effective dose.
Diagnostic medical radiation effective dose of Korea is in the middle of the health care level 1, and accumulative effective dose for one year or many years was not high in most of the Korean people. However, considering preceding research result that low-level dose can cause probabilistic health risk, national policy that record and manage exposure dose of diagnostic medical radiation like that of the US is necessary.