I was unaware of this information. I can’t remember signing off of the risk of the one CT scan I received.
One CT scan can expose a patient to 10 or 15 times as much radiation as another, Smith-Bindman said. “There is very large variation,” she said, “and the doses vary by an order of magnitude — tenfold, not 10% different — for patients seen for the same clinical problem.” In outlier institutions, the variation is even higher, according to research she and a team of international collaborators have published.
She and other researchers estimated in 2009 that high doses could be responsible for 2% of cancers.
Most of what we know about the risks of ionizing radiation comes from long-term studies of people who survived the 1945 atomic bomb blasts at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. These studies show a slightly but significantly increased risk of cancer in those exposed to the blasts, including a group of 25,000 Hiroshima survivors who received less than 50 mSv of radiation — an amount you might get from three or more CT scans.(See “Imaging procedures and their approximate effective radiation doses.”)
dental scans are bad too, especially the ones where they do that whole upper or lower jaw (panorex I believe is what they call them) and it seems like they try to do them every year - at least my guy does which is why I quit going to him…doc
Nothing new. I remember reading back in medical school (late 80s) that for every X number of breast cancers caught via mammography a case of breast cancer will be caused. The tradeoff is worth the risk in that scenario.
I view CT scans similarly as long as they are used appropriately. There for a time (and maybe still) I saw ads for a full body scan to see if anything is wrong. And then you go down rabbit holes chasing some benign anomaly.
Yep. CT angiography is the same (adding in the risk of a reaction to the contrast stuff…which happened to another patient during my husband’s penultimate one) His were annual for the 5 years post his bio-Bentall…and the 5th was intended to be the last of the “routine” scans, specifically because of limiting further radiation exposure. Just as well he had it done as it turns out.
For me, however, CT angiography as a further screening tool (to see if my aggressive lipid lowering therapy is “working”) is apparently not warranted. It seems that the “Gold Standard” for judging success is…reduction of symptoms (which I haven’t had) or no cardiovascular events.
I have refused dental X-rays for decades. They do not even ask. I also refuse to see the dentist when I get a cleaning. The hygienist will say something if there is anything wrong. If it goes wrong between the visits I see the dentist but I have not paid over and over again during the cleanings.
Yes, I had an X-ray for that. I was referring to seeing the hygienist on a yearly basis. I went to see a dentist separately if there is something wrong.
This is very interesting! I never saw a disclaimer or anything about this when I had a few such MRIs a while back. In fact, my case had an anomaly that caused the use of twice the dye. I went for my MRI, they did the first one with no dye, I remained motionless and they added the dye to my IV, then right when they started the second one with dye, the machine crashed and they couldn’t get it running again. So they sent me home and said they would call me back after it was fixed, but more than 24 hours later (to allow the dye to fully dissipate so they could take a new non-dye MRI). The next day they called me and said the machine had a software bug that was fixed overnight by the manufacturer (they are VERY quick to react because MRI machines are literal money printers and time = money). So they scheduled me EARLY the next morning (like 5:30am), I got there, they quickly inserted the IV, did the first non-dye MRI, then added dye into the IV, then waited a bit, then did the second with-dye MRI, and all was completed properly that time. But I got to have the twice the dye added to my body all in a day and a half!
Every drug that I pick up at a pharmacy has a whole list of stuff, risks, side-effects, etc. But I’ve never seen that for drugs (like dye) administered at the hospital. Interesting.
Well, it depends a bit on what contrast medium was used. So many drugs are excreted via the kidneys that those that’re recognised to have a problem in us Oldsters and require more than the normal precautions like dose recalculation etc can have a rapid blood test for renal function beforehand. My CT angiogram, for instance, had an iodine based dye. Had such a test before that…and with an eGFR of >95 had no more likelihood of kidney damage than someone half my age. Which isn’t zero risk, of course, but the test wasn’t being done for idle curiosity etc so it wouldn’t be the sort of thing to make me consider not going ahead.