SOME PROBLEMS ASSOCIATED WITH RADIOGRAPHY OF CHILDREN AND HOW TO MINIMISE THEM

From experience, paediatric radiography is very exerting and time-consuming. For most of these children who come to the X-ray department, it is their first visit and they are very apprehensive. They are very sensitive to strangers touching or undressing them. The environment is strange to them and the looming X-ray equipment does not help to improve the situation. In this country, communication is also a problem as the radiographer may not always be able to speak the child’s language. Some of these children come to the X-ray department after visiting the injection room. To them, their visit to the X-ray department means another injection, therefore they must fight if only to avert the needle. The child, especially the infant, is not able to tell the radiographer where it hurts. In cases of road traffic accidents and battered babies—the latter category is no longer limited to European countries—cases of battered babies come up from time to time to our department. In cases of osteogenesis imperfecta, their bones fracture very easily. All these categories of patients need very careful handling. Preparing children for any special radiological examination is always very problematic. There is the problem of movement and adequate immobilisation during X-rays as these children are not always able to communicate fully with the radiographer; breath holding during chest X-rays is difficult. When we consider the hazards of radiation, we will find that the effects of X-radiation are more acute on children than adults since the rate of cell division is higher in children; there is less margin of exposure error in the child than in the adult.