A comparison of the prevalence of the darkroom diseases syndrome between the radiographers and Critical Care nurses in the selected hospitals of University of Medical Sciences in Kermanshah, 2014

Today, using the chemical materials in X-ray films processing has caused some Occupational concerns associated with the darkroom disease all around the world. The darkroom disease is considered as complications triggered by exposure to chemicals which are used for the processing of the X-ray films by the radiographers. So for this purpose, the present research aims to compare the prevalence of the darkroom diseases syndrome between the radiographers and special care nurses in the selected hospitals of Kermanshah University of Medical Sciences, in 2014. In this case-control study, related data with the darkroom diseases syndrome of 100 radiographers and nurses were collected by using simple sampling and the questionnaire. 50 participants were selected from both the case group and the control group. Then collected data were analyzed by using the SPSS statistical software version 21 and the Chi-square test at a significance level of <0.05. Most of the research units (%71) were female. The radiographer's age mean was 34.4±9.4 and nurses were 29.9±5.8. There was found a significant relationship between the headache (P=0.04), eye irritation (P=0.02) and eye pain (P=0.01) and the type of occupation. In this study, the prevalence of the eye irritation and eye pain were reported higher among the radiographers as compared with the nurses. So the Solutions of personnel safety and awareness improvement to the darkroom disease should be put on the agenda.