Abstract

Many workers are exposed to ionising radiation and it has various detrimental health effects. Those are categorised into stochastic effects and deterministic effects. We represent a case of an azoospermic patient who exposed to ionising radiation and affected by deterministic effects for permanent infertility. He had been worked for a NDT company for six years and mainly performed the radiography testing (RT). He took RT images from 300 to 1,000 per day with barely equipped with protectives. After work, he felt nauseated, fatigue and got a headache from time to time. In addition, he could not conceive a baby even though he tried for eight years with normal intercourses and no contraceptives. He visited urology department and diagnosed with irreversible azoospermia and there were no evidence that he was congenitally infertile; He had a normal male genital organ, normal 46 XY male chromosomes without any microdeletion. While his thermo-luminescence dosimeter indicated his cumulative radiation dose were only 17.81 mSv for 80 months, the radiation dose evaluated by biological assessments was shown to be near two Grey (Gy); The dicentric chromosome assay showed 0.882 Gy (0.597–1.183, 95% CI) and the 1, 2, 4 translocation assay indicated 1.913 Gy (1.358–2.591, 95% CI). Based on the biological assessment of radiation, he was approved for work-relatedness by compensation committee of the Korea Workers Compensation and Welfare Service. In this case report, we represent a case of azoospermia caused by occupational exposure of ionising radiation and suggest biological assessments as an alternative evaluating index for whose radiation exposure is uncertain.