Following a radiologic exam with unusually high exposure, the skin burns appearing hours after the exam are best described as:

• A. early effect and stochastic
• B. late
• C. early effect and deterministic
• D. late effect and deterministic

Answer: (C)

When exposure is high, some tissue reactions occur soon after the event—these are early effects. Among early effects, deterministic effects have a dose threshold and become more severe as the dose increases. Skin burns are a classic example of an early, deterministic radiation effect: they result from tissue damage and cell death in the skin that manifests within hours and become worse with higher dose.

Stochastic effects, by contrast, are probabilistic (like cancer or genetic effects) and have no clear threshold; they are not tied to immediate tissue damage and generally appear later. Late effects would not match a presentation of burns appearing within hours.

So, skin burns appearing hours after a high-exposure radiologic exam best describe an early, deterministic effect.