What is the term for the sum of weighted equivalent doses across radiosensitive tissues, used to estimate overall risk?

• A. Effective dose
• B. Absorbed dose
• C. Equivalent dose
• D. Collective dose

Answer: (A)

The main idea here is converting varying tissue doses into a single metric that reflects overall cancer risk from a given radiological exposure by accounting for how different tissues respond to radiation. This single measure is the effective dose. It combines the dose each tissue receives with a radiation-type factor and a tissue-sensitivity factor, then sums across all tissues to yield a global value in sieverts. This allows us to compare different procedures and estimate the overall stochastic risk for the patient, even when the exposure is not uniform.

Absorbed dose, measured in grays, is just the energy deposited per mass and doesn’t account for how different tissues respond. Equivalent dose adds the effect of radiation type but only for a single tissue, not across the whole body. Collective dose sums exposures for a population (person-sieverts) to assess public health impact, not individual patient risk.