Breast dose audit of a symptomatic service

Monitoring breast dose is as important for the estimation of the radiation risk in a symptomatic service as it is in a national screening programme. The view generally held that special resources are needed to perform breast dose surveys has limited this service and others like it, from compliance with patient radiation safety legislation. In fact any medical physics department providing a support service to a breast imaging unit should be able to carry out a dose survey. This poster is a presentation of the results obtained from a dose survey of the symptomatic breast service provided in this hospital. Using a combination of commonly available software, exposure data from the examinations of 50 patients per mammography X-ray machine was compiled to perform the survey. It was found that the average breast MGD in the unit was 1.52 and 1.7 mGy for the CC and OB views, respectively. There are three digital mammography systems in the unit and the average MGD values for an OB view of compressed thickness 61 ± 5 mm on each unit was 1.59, 1.45 and 1.51 mGy. The breast dose performance of individual mammography X-ray machines were commensurate with results reported in a previous survey of symptomatic services. The overall dose performance was compliant with dose reference levels established by both the national screening programme and a national dose survey of symptomatic services. This work has demonstrated the possibility of any symptomatic service utilising commonly available resources to assess breast dose performance in its own unit.