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Computed tomography (CT or CAT) scans help doctors detect everything from cancer to kidney stones. But some physicians are raising concerns about the safety of such procedures - most notably, an increase in cancer risk. A CT scan packs a mega-dose of radiation - as much as 500 times that of a conventional X-ray. If your doctor orders a CT scan for you or your child, should you think twice...
Absolutely, say researchers behind two recent studies that sound the alarm about the increased cancer risk associated with multiple CT scans. In the first study of its kind, physicians at hospitals in Florida and Washington, D.C., evaluated the medical-imaging records of 1,243 randomly selected patients to calculate just how much radiation each patient had sustained in the past five years. Although CT scans were the biggest source of radiation, other offenders included X-rays and mammograms. The results of the study, presented in May at the annual conference of the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine, were disturbing...
...Appropriate" is the key word - especially since a review study published last November in the New England Journal of Medicine determined that as many as one-third of all CT scans performed in the United States are unnecessary. The authors take issue with the "perhaps 20 million adults and, crucially, more than 1 million children per year in the United States [who] are being irradiated unnecessarily." Part of the problem, the authors say, is that patients are being prescribed multiple, unneeded CT scans, a predicament that could be avoided with better communication between physicians. "Having the same CT scan twice...
Exactly how much radiation is too much? Because CT scans came into vogue in the 1980s and radiation-induced cancer takes roughly 20 years to develop, long-term studies of CT scans and cancer are still under way. But scientists are already anticipating future health implications. Indeed, researchers found a population of 25,000 Japanese post-atomic-bomb survivors who were exposed to roughly the same amount of radiation as two CT scans. Based in part on those studies, the Food and Drug Administration estimates that an adult's lifetime risk of developing radiation-induced cancer from a CT scan...
Compared with adults, children are more sensitive to radiation because they have longer life expectancies and because their cells divide more rapidly, making their DNA more vulnerable to damage. A child's risk of developing a fatal cancer from one CT scan is as high as 1 in 500. Although newer machines can be adjusted to deliver up to 50% less radiation for children and small adults, a 2001 study published in the American Journal of Radiation showed that radiologic technologists (RT) rarely make those adjustments. "Changing technical factors is very easy. It just requires a little thought...