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Abstract
Along with increase in the frequency and exposure dose from the diagnostic medical radiation procedures, the public's interest in radiation exposure has also been growing. In this study, in order to estimate the Cumulative Exposure Frequency and the cumulative effective dose of diagnostic medical radiation in the Korean population, we included 680 diagnostic medical radiation procedure codes of the Health Insurance Review & Assessment Service's health insurance medical expenses data and adopted the effective dose data from the 2008 report of the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation. We combined the data of one million individuals in the national sample cohort database (2002-10) of the National Health Insurance Service. The results revealed that 93.2% (917 972) of the subjects were exposed to diagnostic medical radiation at least once in the past nine years, and the Cumulative Exposure Frequency was 17 286.4 per 1000 individuals with a cumulative effective dose of 5.7 (±17.8) mSv per person. Additionally, 93.1% (854 480) of the subjects had a cumulative effective dose less than 20 mSv, and 0.7% (6139) had a dose that exceeded 100 mSv (extreme), showing that the dosage level was mostly low. However, the number of individuals whose exposure exceeded 100 mSv/y increased 28-fold, from 18 in 2002 to 500 in 2010. In addition, the size of increase also grew each year, suggesting that cancer occurrence due to diagnostic medical radiation may have also increased. In order determine the causal relationship between cancer occurrence and diagnostic medical radiation and setup a guideline for exposure, it is necessary to monitor individual cumulative exposure doses nation-wide and follow up on heavily exposed individuals for an extended period of time.

Author information

Gil JW1, Kim SY2, Park WY3, Kim WD3, Lee YS4, Kang GW4, Shin DW5, Park CY6, Park JH7.
1
Department of Radiology, Dae-Jeon SUN General Hospital, Dae-Jeon, Republic of Korea.
2
Chungbuk Regional Cardiocerebrovascular Center, Chungbuk National University Hospital, Cheong-ju, Republic of Korea.
3
Department of Radiation Oncology, College of Medicine, Chungbuk National University, Cheong-ju, Republic of Korea.
4
Department of Health Informatics and Management, College of Medicine, Chungbuk National University, Cheong-ju, Republic of Korea.
5
Center for Health Promotion/Department of Family Medicine, Seoul National University Hospital, Seoul, Republic of Korea.
6
Division of Cardiovascular and Rare Disease, Center for Biomedical Science, Korea National Institute of Health, Cheong-ju, Republic of Korea.
7
College of Medicine/Graduate School of Health Science Business Convergence, Chungbuk National University, Cheong-ju, Republic of Korea.