Trend and risk of diagnostic medical exposure to Taiwan population

Due to the rapid growth of diagnostic medical examination frequencies in recent years for imaging modalities such as the computed tomography and the interventional fluoroscopy, the population dose and the health risk from medical exposure are of increasing interest. The temporal trends over time for the population dose from diagnostic examinations provide data on the promotion of high standard quality assurance programs. In the present work, studies have been performed to illustrate the trends from 1997 to 2008 for the examination frequencies and effective doses of diagnostic examinations in Taiwan. The frequency data were extracted from the Taiwan Health Insurance Research Database. The average effective dose per examination was derived from hospital surveys, measured data, and published results. Estimates of the collective and per caput effective doses were made for radiography, fluoroscopy, mammography, computed tomography, interventional fluoroscopy, and nuclear medicine. Risks of cancer induction from medical exposure were also estimated.