Barnes, By Eric
Radiation Doses for Common CT Scans What’s the Cancer Risk? 4 min read Computed tomography -- also known as computed axial tomography, a CT scan, or a CAT scan -- is a tool doctors use to diagnose many types of health problems. Special X-ray equipment creates images of the structure...
A CT scan produces around 7 mSv, or around the same amount of radiation as you'd expect to absorb if you spent a year in Cornwall, where the sun exposure and radioactive rocks pump up the levels of 'natural background radiation' (even this amount isn't considered dangerous).An...
I recall hearing one statistic that a CT scan of the chest was equivalent to 500 chest x-rays. Watching everyone in the trauma bay don and doff their heavy lead jackets gave me the impression that evenonex-ray was risky enough to avoid. Clarifying Risk Fast-forward to residency and this ...
While the cancer risk from a single CT scan is low, exposure can increase over time.A 2009 study estimated that CT scans could contribute to 2% of all cancer cases -- a number experts suspect may be even higher today as scan rates have increased....
Risk is higher in young patients because They live longer, giving cancers more time to develop. More cellular growth (and thus susceptibility to DNA damage) occurs in the young. For a 1-year-old who has a CT scan of the abdomen, estimated lifetime risk of developing cancer is...
A CT scan is a kind of X-ray that generates highly accurate cross-sectional views of the inner side of the body. It helps guide treatments and diagnose diseases such as cancers.Past studies have suggested CT scans may cause a small increase in lifelong cancer risk because their high-energy...
Radiation exposure from CT scans in childhood and subsequent risk of leukaemia and brain tumours: a retrospective cohort study, The Lancet, Early Online Publication (2012) Google Scholar 7. Frush D.P., Frush K.S. In a new kind of light: patient safety in pediatric radiology Clin Ped Emerg...
Among those undergoing CT imaging in our ED, high-exposure patients (greater than ten scans) constituted a significant minority, while more than one in four patients underwent more than one CT scan during the study period. While the presumed overall risk of radiation-induced cancer continues to ...
radiation risk, as described in another article in this issue.10 If it is determined that a nuclear medicine procedure should be performed, then the protocol should be optimized to use the least amount of radiation dose possible while providing adequate image quality to interpret the scan. ...