Survey on Operating modalities of the staff members during clinical practices in the field of pediatric Interventional Cardiology in Italy

The questionnaire was designed based on the approaches reported in tables 7 to 9 of the Scientific Position Statement on multimodality dose optimization from the Image Gently Alliance by Hill et al. The survey consisted of two sections: 1) hardware features and software configuration of the equipment: manufacturer and model, installation year, detector type, storage of the last image hold and last fluoro loop, presence of dose reduction system (or noise reduction algorithms in image post-processing), availability of multiple filters for beam hardening, programmable radiological acquisition settings depending on patient size; 2) operator’s approach: selection of specific protocols by patient weight, removal of the anti-scatter grid, positioning of the patient between the tube and image detector, choice of fluoroscopy modes (low/normal/high) and pulse rate (pps) and image cine-acquisition frame rate (fps), use of collimation and magnification.