A comparative study on the Atomic Energy Regulatory Compliance to contain man made ionizing radiation in Diagnostic Medical Imaging Equipments

Abstract

The unnatural ionizing radiation emanated from medical diagnostic imaging newlineequipments particular CT and X-ray scanners contribute more than 50 percent of newlineexposure to radiation globally. India is one amongst 85 markets, which has newlineencouraged unrestricted trading of refurbished medical devices. In India, Atomic newlineEnergy Regulatory Body monitors the effective implementation of regulatory newlineguidelines by the medical equipment manufacturers and end-users. The recent policy newlinechange enforced by the regulator in September 2015, which restricts the importing of newlineused Diagnostic Imaging equipment s age up to a maximum of 7 years that has newlinetriggered a plethora of research in this domain. This research was intended to find newlinean answer for the research question; Do hospitals and diagnostic centers follow newlinethe radiation containment guidelines of AERB for protecting the stakeholders newlinefrom excessive man-made radiation?. The AERB radiation safety framework and newlineInternational Atomic Energy Agency safety standards were used to design the newlineevaluation parameters for assessing the status of existing practices newlineThis study has sampled 451 institutions covering Government hospitals, newlineCorporate hospitals, Chain of diagnostic centers and Private diagnostic centers in newlineTamil Nadu, India. The compliance to regulator s guidelines was measured against a newlinestructured questionnaire on seven different dependent variables encompassing newlineRegulatory, Layout Engineering, Technician s Competency, Human Safety, newlineOperations Know-How, Monitoring Radiation Exposure and Management newlineCommitment. The impact of compliance was tested using the independent newlinevariables, NABL accreditation, Location, Revenue and Patient Queue Size. The newlinecomparative study of compliance score with the Kruskal-Wallis One Way Analysis newlineOf Variance has revealed that Government hospitals and Corporate hospitals have newlineemerged as Radiation Compliance Leaders while Private Diagnostic Centers and newlineChain of Diagnostic Centers have followed Laggards , leaving lots of scope for newlineimprovements newline