Patient understanding of radiation risk from medical computed tomography - A comparison of Hispanic vs. Non-Hispanic Emergency Department populations
- Published
- Accepted
- Subject Areas
- Emergency and Critical Care, Radiology and Medical Imaging, Statistics
- Keywords
- Radiation risk, CT, Patient knowledge
- Copyright
- © 2015 McNierney-Moore et al.
- Licence
- This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ PrePrints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
- Cite this article
- 2015. Patient understanding of radiation risk from medical computed tomography - A comparison of Hispanic vs. Non-Hispanic Emergency Department populations. PeerJ PrePrints 3:e993v1 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.993v1
Abstract
Background: Cultural differences and language barriers may adversely impact patients with respect to understanding the risks/benefits of medical testing. Objective: We hypothesized that there would be no difference in Hispanic vs. non-Hispanic patients’ knowledge of radiation risk that results from CT of the abdomen/pelvis (CTAP). Methods: We enrolled a convenience sample of adults at an inner-city ED. Patients provided written answers to rate agreement on a 10-point scale for two correct statements comparing radiation exposure equality between: CTAP and 5 years of background radiation (question 1); CTAP and 200 chest x-rays (question 3). Patients also rated their agreement that multiple CT scans increase the lifetime cancer risk (question 2). Scores of > 8 were considered good knowledge. Multivariate logistic regression analyses were performed to estimate the independent effect of the Hispanic variable. Results: 600 patients in the study group; 63% Hispanic, mean age 39.2 +/- 13.9 years. Hispanics and non-Hispanics whites were similar with respect to good knowledge-level answers to question 1 (17.3 vs 15.1%; OR=1.2; 95 % CI=0.74- 2.0), question 2 (31.2 vs. 39.3%; OR=0.76; 95% CI=0.54 - 1.1), and question 3 (15.2 vs. 16.5%; OR =1.1; 95% CI= 0.66 - 1.8). Compared to patients who earned < $20,000, patients with income > $40,000 were more likely to answer question 2 with good knowledge (OR =1.96; 95% CI=1.2 – 3.1). Conclusion: The study group’s overall knowledge of radiation risk was poor, but we did not find significant differences between Hispanic vs. non-Hispanic patients.
Author Comment
This manuscript has been accepted to PeerJ for publication.
Supplemental Information
Radiation Knowledge Data file
Radiation Knowledge Data
Data collection sheet with verbal patient consent script and documentation
Data collection sheet with verbal patient consent script and documentation