Preface

Article Outline

• Copyright

Over the years, the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP), referred to below as ‘the Commission’, has issued many reports providing advice on radiological protection and safety in medicine. Its Publication 73 is a general overview of this area. These reports summarise the general principles of radiation protection and provide advice on the application of those principles to the various uses of ionising radiation in medicine and biomedical research.

Most of these reports are of a general nature, and the Commission wishes to address some specific situations where difficulties have been observed. It is desirable that reports on such problem areas be written in a style which is accessible to those who may be directly concerned in their daily work, and that every effort is taken to ensure wide circulation of such reports.

A first step in this direction was taken at the Commission's meeting in Oxford, United Kingdom, in September 1997. At that time, on the recommendation of ICRP Committee 3, the Commission established several Task Groups to produce reports on topical issues in medical radiation protection.

Some such reports have now appeared in print, and the present one is the result of the work of yet another one of those Task Groups. The terms of reference of this Task Group on Accident Prevention and Safety in Radiation Therapy were to prepare a document with recommendations to prevent accidents. The Task Group was requested to base its report on ICRP Publications 60 and 73, giving special emphasis to recent accidents and to the lessons to be drawn from them. The scope of the report to be produced was outlined in some detail, and it was requested that recommendations and check-lists be developed.

The membership of the Task Group was as follows:

Corresponding members were:

The Commission is grateful to P.J. Biggs for kindly reviewing the manuscript by correspondence. Numerous helpful comments were received from interested parties through the Commission's customary public consultation via the Internet.

The membership of Committee 3 during the period of preparation of this report was:

This report aims to serve the purposes described above. In order to be as useful as possible for those purposes, its style differs in a few respects from the usual style of the Commission's publications in the Annals of the ICRP. Some colour figures are also included in order to illustrate more clearly the possible consequences of accidents to patients undergoing radiotherapy.

The report was approved for publication by the Commission in October 2000.