Public Health England (PHE) has announced its next review of doses from CT examinations in the UK, which will be the fourth UK national CT dose survey.
It is collecting protocol and patient dose index data for adult CT examinations. A separate survey looking at paediatric doses, undertaken by IPEM in collaboration with PHE, will be launched at a later date.
The College of Radiographers has endorsed participation in the survey as CPD and members are being encouraged to submit data for any of the 13 examinations or other adult examinations that are routinely performed and/or have the highest doses.
The survey forms used for both surveys will be very similar in appearance; you may wish to collect data for both surveys at the same time but submit the data to the separate surveys.
The data collection form and scanner help sheets are available on the CT users group website at http://www.ctug.org.uk/.
Advice offered to those submitting data includes, “If you intend to use a dose management system (DMS) to collect data for the survey, you may wish to speak to your supplier first to see whether they have, or are working on, automatic tools to extract the data and export the required fields to the spreadsheet format. PHE have been in contact with a number of suppliers to implement this feature, but his approach is still in progress.”
PHE has requested that data is contemporary and representative with current practice; where retrospective data is submitted, this should be no older than January 2017 and only for scanners still in use.
In the final report, it is likely that participating centres will be acknowledged. If you’d prefer to remain anonymous, please include this information when submitting your data.
Data submission is open until the end of July 2019, but if it is considered that insufficient data has been received for any examination at this time, this will be extended.
If sufficient data is received, National DRLs for additional examinations will be set.
For any queries and to submit data please email [email protected].