[Structure of the meeting of the german radiological society and scientific discourse pertaining to radiation dose and dose reduction: an analysis of 1998 - 2008].

Purpose: Evaluation of the emphasis of themes pertaining to radiation dose and dose reduction at the Meeting of the German Radiological Society from 1998 - 2008 in comparison to international data.

Materials And Methods: Retrospective analysis of 9440 abstracts with documentation of study presentation character, type of imaging, and examined body region. Abstracts stating radiation dose or primarily dealing with radiation dose/dose reduction were documented. Results were compared with a Pubmed query.

Results: The percentage of purely scientific presentations sank in the observation period from 88 to 66 %. While contributions dealing with MRI sank from 48 to 34 %, those dealing with CT rose from 30 to 34 %. The percentage of abstracts dealing with radiation dose rose from 7 to 10 %, while that of work primarily pertaining to dose/dose reduction grew from 4 to 6 % and 2 to 4 %, respectively. Of all abstracts concerning CT, 15 % touched on radiation dose, while 9 % and 6 % primarily dealt with dose and dose reduction. The respective numbers for cardiac CT, whose relative share of all CT abstracts rose from 3 % in 1998 to 12 % in 2008, were 10 %, 7 %, and 5 %. An online query produced 137,791 publications on CT, and 2 % of these abstracts mentioned radiation dose and 0.5 % mentioned dose reduction.

Conclusion: The number of presentations dealing with dose at the Meeting of the German Radiological Society has risen with time and is higher than the international number. On the other hand, > 90 % of all presentations and > 85 % of all CT abstracts do not mention radiation dose. In light of increasing public concern relating to radiation exposure, more intensive research of these themes is warranted.