Exposure of the patient during most diagnostic radiological procedures performed in the field of dental radiology is very small and there is a very small risk of adverse effects of ionizing radiation.

Patient exposure can be described by the effective dose expressed in sieverts. Sievert is a large unit of measurement, so the patient’s exposure in radiological diagnostic procedures is most often expressed in mSv (millisieverts, thousandths of a sievert) or even in µSv (microsieverts, one millionth of a sievert).

The effective dose is related to the risk of exposing the whole body to ionizing radiation and is not intended to describe the radiation of an individual patient, but a typical patient. The effective dose of the patient can be used for the purpose of comparing different modalities, i.e. exposure of the patient when using different types of sources of ionizing radiation used in the implementation of a diagnostic radiological procedure.

The following table compares the effective doses of a typical patient for different diagnostic radiological procedures performed within dental radiology. The same table also shows exposure of the population as a result of daily exposure to natural radiation and during overseas airplane flights.