Paediatric radiology and scientific contributions to radiation dose at the meeting of the German Radiological Society--an analysis of an 11-year period.

Aim: Evaluation of the emphasis on themes pertaining to paediatric radiology and radiation dose at the Meeting of the German Radiological Society from 1998 to 2008 in comparison to international data.

Materials And Methods: Retrospective analysis of 9440 abstracts with documentation of type of contribution, imaging modality, and examined body region. Abstracts primarily dealing with paediatric radiology and those stating radiation dose were documented. Results were compared with a Pubmed query.

Results: 448 contributions in paediatric radiology were presented corresponding to 5% of all abstracts with an increase from 5 (1998) to 7% (2008). The proportion of prospective studies of all congress contributions was 10%, whereas in paediatric radiology, the share of prospective studies was 6%. From 1998 to 2008, the share of MRI fell from 48 to 38%, while CT contributions rose from 30 to 34%. Within paediatric radiology, the proportion of CT rose from 23 to 29%, while MRI and ultrasound fell from 63 to 48% and 35 to 19%, respectively. The share of abstracts dealing with radiation dose rose from 7 to 10% while that primarily pertaining to dose reduction grew from 2 to 4%. Of all abstracts concerning CT, 15% touched on radiation dose, whereas 6% primarily dealt with dose reduction. Among all abstracts dealing with paediatric radiology, 20 and 6% mentioned radiation dose and dose reduction, respectively. In the subgroup of paediatric radiology CT abstracts, radiation dose and dose reduction were mentioned in 34 and 16%, respectively. An online query produced 137,791 publications on CT, of whose abstracts 3% mentioned radiation dose and 0.5% mentioned dose reduction. 11% of all CT publications dealt with paediatric populations and 2% of these publications examined questions of radiation dose.

Conclusions: In the last 11 years the Meeting of the German Radiological Society has presented a growing number of contributions pertaining to paediatric radiology. CT has shown the most pronounced growth of all contributions. Paediatric radiology has significantly more often dealt with questions of radiation exposure than those from general radiology. However, contributions with definite reference to radiation dose, both pertaining to all publications and specifically to those dealing with CT, remain a minority, albeit with a higher proportion when compared to international data.