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. 2017 Aug;40(8):1131-1140.
doi: 10.1007/s00270-017-1674-5. Epub 2017 May 11.

Radiation-Induced Skin Injuries to Patients: What the Interventional Radiologist Needs to Know

Werner Jaschke  1 , Matthias Schmuth  2 , Annalisa Trianni  3 , Gabriel Bartal  4
Affiliations

Radiation-Induced Skin Injuries to Patients: What the Interventional Radiologist Needs to Know

Werner Jaschke et al. Cardiovasc Intervent Radiol. 2017 Aug.

Abstract

For a long time, radiation-induced skin injuries were only encountered in patients undergoing radiation therapy. In diagnostic radiology, radiation exposures of patients causing skin injuries were extremely rare. The introduction of fast multislice CT scanners and fluoroscopically guided interventions (FGI) changed the situation. Both methods carry the risk of excessive high doses to the skin of patients resulting in skin injuries. In the early nineties, several reports of epilation and skin injuries following CT brain perfusion studies were published. During the same time, several papers reported skin injuries following FGI, especially after percutaneous coronary interventions and neuroembolisations. Thus, CT and FGI are of major concern regarding radiation safety since both methods can apply doses to patients exceeding 5 Gy (National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements threshold for substantial radiation dose level). This paper reviews the problem of skin injuries observed after FGI. Also, some practical advices are given how to effectively avoid skin injuries. In addition, guidelines are discussed how to deal with patients who were exposed to a potentially dangerous radiation skin dose during medically justified interventional procedures.

Keywords: Interventional radiology; Radiation; Skin injuries.

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Conflict of interest statement

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Ethical Standard

This article does not contain any studies with human participants or animals performed by any of the authors.

Human and Animal Rights

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

Informed Consent

Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Number of patients in Denmark having one or more X-ray examinations in 2004 as a function of age and sex (adapted from [18])
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Age distribution of patients in Denmark undergoing FGI procedures
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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