[Thoracic radiography in occupational health examination of hospital personnel. Making decisions].

Background: The routine chest radiography has been legally suppressed because of its low diagnostic profitability in non selected populations. Health surveillance of occupational populations at respiratory risk is entering a transitional period, where new guidelines are needed. Therefore, we determined to study the percentage of pathological findings in the chest radiographies of health examinations for hospital workers and whether it was possible to obtain explicative models allowing to calculate the probability of radiographies alteration.

Methods: A representative stratified sample of workers belonging to the Hospital La Paz in Madrid is studied, elaborating a transversal study based on the first health examination of their clinical history and two chest radiographies of further examinations. We carried out a multivariant analysis to calculate the probability of their alteration.

Results: We obtain alterations percentages of 19% for the first chest radiography; 23.5%, 22% and 21% for the two further ones and for the total, respectively. The explicative models obtained are based on age, family and personal antecedents of the respiratory disease, number of cigarettes smoked, cholesterol levels, the Mantoux test and the previous radiographies alteration.

Conclusions: These equations may be an additional instrument together with labour environment considerations and within a clinical context, to help to the health specific occasional surveillance of the respiratory risk of hospital personnel.