The Analysis of Survival and of Life Potential Loss in Workers Diagnosed with Acute Radiation Syndrome Following a Radiation Accident

Evaluation of ionizing radiation effect on life expectancy rates in humans is one of the topical issues of radiation medicine. The goal of this study is to analyze survival rates and the life potential loss among workers of the Mayak Production Association workers who did and who did not develop acute radiation syndrome after radiation accidents. The analysis included 64 Mayak workers (54 males and 10 females), and it was performed using the STATISTICA 10 software. We evaluated survival rates prior to and after the main disease which subsequently caused death, percentages of individuals who had not survived to 40, 60, 80 and 80+ years and total, partial and single (weighted mean) life potential loss and the index of the life potential loss. The analysis revealed that workers with severe and most severe acute radiation syndrome demonstrated decreased survival rates and increased life potential loss compared to workers with moderate and mild acute radiation syndrome and to radiation accident participants without acute radiation syndrome. The cause for this decrease was the extreme course of the syndrome. In severe cases, the shorter life expectancy was caused mainly by premature death due to malignant neoplasms and acute radiation syndrome. We observed linear regression association of survival rates and life potential loss with 1 Ln of radiation dose. The relative risk of the survival rate decrease and an increase in the life potential loss was considerably higher (from 3.64 to 52.0 times, p < 0.05–0.001) in workers with severe and most severe acute radiation syndrome and acutely exposed to higher doses (above 5 or 10 Gy) compared to other workers.