Background: Adult patients with congenital heart disease under follow-up often need to undergo diagnostic procedures which expose them to radiation.
Aim: To evaluate radiation doses in adult patients with congenital heart disease during follow-up.
Methods: Data on diagnostic procedures were used from the European Heart Survey on adult congenital heart disease, a multicenter retrospective cohort study. Lesions included in the survey were Atrial Septal Defect, Ventricular Septal Defect, Fallot, Fontan, Coarctation, Transposition of the Great Arteries, Marfan, and Cyanotic lesions. A total of 4110 patients (52% female) with a mean age of 32 years (range 17-85) were included. The follow-up time ranged from 0 to 72 months, with a median of 61 months. There were a total of 18,403 patient-years of follow-up. During this time, a mean of 4.5 visits per patient took place. Radiation doses were calculated using the number of examinations in each patient's data file. Effective radiation doses are given in millisievert (mSv).
Results: The average cumulative annual effective dose per patient was 0.46 mSv. The relative contributions to these doses were 3% by chest X-rays, 39% by computed tomography scans, 42% by angiography, and 16% by nuclear scans. Effective doses were higher in patients with Fontan, Coarctation, Marfan and Cyanotic lesions, as well as in patients with Atrial Septal Defects.
Conclusions: Exposure to radiation during follow-up of patients with adult congenital heart disease mainly stems from computed tomography scans and angiography. Patients with Fontan, Coarctation, Marfan and Cyanotic lesions are more likely to get high doses from computed tomography. In these lesions, therefore, particular care should be taken to use non-ionizing imaging procedures whenever possible.