The Image Gently campaign for children
Image Gently, a campaign to increase awareness about the cumulative risk of radiation exposure to children who have diagnostic imaging examinations, has been underway since January 2008.
In its first year, the campaign focused on ‘child-sizing’ paediatric CT dose to reduce radiation exposure. Image Gently emphasises that a CT exam should be ordered for children only when absolutely necessary and that other types of imaging procedures should be substituted whenever possible.
Free paediatric protocols are available at www.imagegently.org. The coalition creating the campaign, the Alliance for Radiation Safety in Paediatric Imaging, reports that these protocols were downloaded by 9,400 radiology professionals and that the website had more than 99,000 visits in 2008.
The Alliance started as a coalition of thirteen radiology associations with a predominantly US membership. Today it spans the globe. Virtually all international paediatric imaging society are members. Each society in the coalition is responsible for promoting the Image Gently campaign to its members.
The website and protocols are in English, but the Alliance wants to make this a multilingual site in 2009. Dr Kimberly Applegate, professor of paediatric radiology at the Indiana University School of Medicine, leads the Alliance’s International Working Group, which was organised in the fall at the time when the European Society of Paediatric Imaging joined the coalition. The Alliance welcomes medical professionals who wish to volunteer to do this. Volunteers have been identified to provide translations in French, German, Portuguese and Spanish — as well as Arabic, Chinese, Korean and Turkish.
An education initiative for parents and paediatricians was begun in February 2009. The goal is to educate parents about the benefits and the risks of diagnostic imaging. The Alliance does not want to alarm parents but, in the USA, some parents are requesting that CT exams be ordered for their children because they think it is the ‘best’ examination. The American Academy of Paediatrics underwrote the cost to develop two brochures for parents that can be downloaded free of charge and reproduced. Parents are also being asked to keep records of the date, location and type of radiology exams that their children have. Unlike Europe, it is not common for parents to keep track of this information.
01.03.2009
