Special Issue "Public Health: How Safe Is Cardiac Imaging?"

Guest Editor
Dr. Eugenio Picano
Institute of Clinical Physiology, Via Moruzzi 1, 56124 Pisa, Italy
Website: http://www.ifc.cnr.it/
E-Mail:
Interests: acute and long-term effects of ionizing radiation in diagnostic and therapeutic cardiology procedures; health technology assessment; biological and economic sustainability of medical imaging

Guest Editor
Dr. Maria Grazia Andreassi
CNR, Institute of Clinical Physiology, Via Aurelia Sud, Massa, Italy
E-Mail:

Medical radiation imaging is the major source of man-made irradiation in western countries. About 5 billion imaging examinations are performed worldwide each year, and cardiac imaging represent >50% of all ionizing radiation examinations, accounting for about two thirds of the total effective dose to patients Individual lifetime patient exposures may well reach values around a cumulative exposure of 100 mSv, corresponding to 5,000 chest x-rays by the execution—one after the other — of a Multislice Computed Tomography (MSCT) (15 mSv), a Thallium scan (20–25 mSv), a coronary angiography (6 mSv), a coronary stenting (15 mSv), a follow-up repeat MSCT (again 15 mSv) and Thallium scan (again 20–25 mSv). Unfortunately, physicians show little awareness of the dose of the exam they daily perform or request. The current status of this field of evidence is the subjects of this special issue. In particular, it will comprise manuscripts providing information on population impact, professional and patient exposure from radiation dose in cardiac imaging. In addition, the issue will include also a paper describing the findings of recent studies regarding the use of surrogate biomarker of susceptibility in the assessing long-term risk of heath effects, and the future perspectives of the molecular epidemiology. Based on these contributions, the issue will try to compose a balanced issue in order to increase awareness and knowledge about radiation exposure from cardiac imaging and implications for health risk.

• - free for readers, with low publishing fees paid by authors or their institutions
• Free publication for manuscripts submitted by end of 2008.
• Rapid publication: accepted papers are immediately published online (we started to publish papers quickly since September 2008). The printed edition will only be continued for the Proceedings of the yearly International Symposiums on Recent Advances in Environmental Health Research starting 2009.

Submission

The Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health (ISSN 1660-4601) was launched in 2004 and is an Open Access journal, with the main Editorial Office located in Basel, Switzerland. It has been accepted for coverage in Science Citation Index Expanded, available as the Web of Science and in Current Contents/Agriculture, Biology, and Environmental Sciences. Coverage will begin with the 2009 issues. This journal is also abstracted and indexed very rapidly by Chemical Abstracts, MedLine/PubMed and EMBASE. The IJERPH maintains a rapid editorial procedure and a rigorous peer-review system. Well written papers have been peer-reviewed and published in less than 4 weeks from manuscript submission. All papers published in IJERPH have DOI numbers.

All papers should be submitted to ijerph@mdpi.com with copy to the guest editor. To be published continuously until the deadline and papers will be listed together at this special issue website.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a paper. Open Access publication fees are 300 CHF per paper. English correction fees (250 CHF) will be added in certain cases (550 CHF per paper for those papers that require extensive additional formatting and/or English corrections.). Free publication in open access format for manuscripts submitted in 2008.

• Cardiac Imaging
• Low-dose radiation
• Interventional Cardiology
• Computed Tomography
• Health Risk

Author: Dieter Regulla
Affiliation: Radiprotection Institute, Munich, Germany
Title: Population impact: Medical versus occupational, public and incidental exposure

Author: Eliseo Vano
Affiliation: San Carlos Hospital, Madrid, Spain
Title: Professional exposure in the catheterization laboratory

Author: Richard Semelka
Affiliation: Duke University, USA
Title: Cumulative patient effective dose in cardiology