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Abstract
Infants and children require special attention when receiving care in the radiology department. Manual restraint techniques and commercial immobilizer devices may be used to keep the pediatric client motionless during the radiograph. Decreasing client motion helps improve image quality, thus decreasing the need for repeat x-rays. Minimizing the radiation dose is particularly important for the pediatric client. This article presents safe and effective care measures and management for pediatric immobilization techniques in the radiology department.
Section snippets
The pediatric client is at risk for injury
Infants and young children are at risk for injury from adverse effects of radiation. Rapid growth of infants and young children causes their cells and tissues to be more sensitive to damage from radiation. They are smaller and thinner than adults, so not as much radiation is required for imaging. Radiology personnel should take care to reduce exposure and use the minimum radiation doses possible to protect the pediatric client. This includes obtaining radiographs using less exposure time,
Parental presence
Parents should be encouraged to stay with their infant or young child if possible during radiographic examination. Most parents have a desire to stay with their child during procedures. The presence of the familiar and loving parent is comforting to a child and can lessen anxiety and protest. If the radiology department does not permit parents to stay with their child during a radiology procedure, then consideration should be given to developing such policy to allow parents to be continuously
Immobilization to achieve the best image on the first attempt
Because a client's uncontrolled body motion presents a great problem with imaging and causes blurring of the radiograph, skillful use of immobilization techniques and devices is commonly used with pediatric clients in the radiology department. Recording the image correctly on the first attempt prevents need for repeated x-rays and keeps radiation dose to a minimum. There are several commercially available immobilization devices used to help minimize motion in the pediatric client. These include
Pediatric client safety
It should be emphasized that manual and/or mechanical restraints should only be used when absolutely necessary when the infant or young child cannot cooperate with verbal direction to stay motionless during an x-ray examination. Restraint should be used only for a very short time, such as 5- to 10-min duration. Examinations that require a long time to complete, such as computerized tomography scans and magnetic resonance imaging studies, often require the use of sedating drugs for infants and
Conclusion
Diagnostic imaging can be an integral part of health care for the pediatric client. Working together, the radiology department personnel can provide precise radiograph images with careful attention to minimizing radiation dose to the pediatric client. Radiology nurses can help to make the experience of visiting the radiology department less stressful and less frightening for the child and family. The nurse can promote parent–child togetherness, provide education and support, and provide
Cited by [6]
Australasian radiographers’ choices of immobilisation strategies for paediatric radiological examinations
2020, Radiography
Patient movement in medical imaging may cause image artefacts or positioning errors, often requiring further imaging to obtain diagnostic results. This may create a risk of increased radiation exposure in some modalities such as radiography, computed tomography [CT] or fluoroscopy.3,4 Radiographers should always strive to minimise patient radiation dose, especially for paediatric patients, who are more radiosensitive than adults and hence more vulnerable to radiation-induced cellular damage.3,4
Keeping Children Still in Medical Imaging Examinations- Immobilisation or Restraint: A Literature Review
2019, Journal of Medical Imaging and Radiation Sciences
In general, the research articles focussed on the use of immobilisation techniques in different aged paediatrics [10,19,20], the effect on image quality when an immobilisation device is used [12,21], and the effects on staff and parents when holding the child [22–24]. Aside from two review articles discussing radiation protection [8,13], the remainder explored children's rights, consent, and legal issues surrounding paediatric restraint in medical imaging [4,5,11,14–16]. As consent and legal issues are difficult to explore through research, review articles summarising legal documents and legal acts were deemed necessary to include in this literature review.
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© 2016 by the Association for Radiologic & Imaging Nursing.