IPEM topical report: personal dose monitoring requirements in healthcare.

There are two major challenges for personal dosimetry in healthcare. The implications for interventional clinicians of the reduction in eye dose limit in the European Basic Safety Standards and UK regulations, and the large dose gradients across the hands of nuclear medicine staff who manipulate radionuclides. Guidelines on personal dosimetry have been prepared to address these and other issues.

EYE LENS DOSIMETRY WITHIN THE CARDIAC CATHETERISATION LABORATORY-ARE ANCILLARY STAFF BEING FORGOTTEN?

Eye lens doses have been widely explored for interventional clinicians, however, data for ancillary staff is limited. Eye doses have been measured using a headband technique for clinicians, specialist registrars, nurses and radiographers working in a cardiac catheterisation laboratory in a UK hospital. Workload was found to be significantly higher for ancillary staff, and consequently, despite the absolute monthly collar doses and other indicators such as eye dose/KAP and eye dose/procedure being highest for clinicians, our study found there was no significant difference in the monthly eye dose readings between the clinicians and nurses (p = 0.

Tailor-made Ge-doped silica-glass for clinical diagnostic X-ray dosimetry.

In the modern clinical practice of diagnostic radiology there is a growing demand for radiation dosimetry, it also being recognized that with increasing use of X-ray examinations additional population dose will result, accompanied by an additional albeit low potential for genetic consequences. At the doses typical of diagnostic radiology there is also a low statistical risk for cancer induction; in adhering to best practice, to be also implied is a low but non-negligible potential for deterministic sensitive organ responses, including in regard to the skin and eyes. Risk reduction is important, in line with the principle of ALARP, both in regard to staff and patients alike; for the latter modern practice is usually guided by Dose Reference Levels (DRL) while for the former and members of the public, legislated controls (supported by safe working practices) pertain.

Dengue outlook for the World Cup in Brazil: an early warning model framework driven by real-time seasonal climate forecasts.

Background: With more than a million spectators expected to travel among 12 different cities in Brazil during the football World Cup, June 12-July 13, 2014, the risk of the mosquito-transmitted disease dengue fever is a concern. We addressed the potential for a dengue epidemic during the tournament, using a probabilistic forecast of dengue risk for the 553 microregions of Brazil, with risk level warnings for the 12 cities where matches will be played.

Methods: We obtained real-time seasonal climate forecasts from several international sources (European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts [ECMWF], Met Office, Meteo-France and Centro de Previsão de Tempo e Estudos Climáticos [CPTEC]) and the observed dengue epidemiological situation in Brazil at the forecast issue date as provided by the Ministry of Health.

The development of an early warning system for climate-sensitive disease risk with a focus on dengue epidemics in Southeast Brazil.

Previous studies demonstrate statistically significant associations between disease and climate variations, highlighting the potential for developing climate-based epidemic early warning systems. However, limitations include failure to allow for non-climatic confounding factors, limited geographical/temporal resolution, or lack of evaluation of predictive validity. Here, we consider such issues for dengue in Southeast Brazil using a spatio-temporal generalised linear mixed model with parameters estimated in a Bayesian framework, allowing posterior predictive distributions to be derived in time and space.