CT scans are becoming routine, partly due to patient expectations and defensive medicine. The exposure to radiation is something that has been underpublicized, so getting the word out is helpful:
A chest CT, for example, exposes a patient to about 8 millisieverts of radiation – 80 to 400 times the radiation exposure from a chest X-ray and, recent studies show, close to the lowest doses received by Japanese survivors of the atomic bombs who were farthest away from the blasts. These survivors, irradiated with 5 to 20 millisieverts, have demonstrated a small but measurable increase in their lifetime risk of dying from cancer.
Related posts:
- Increasing radiation exposure to patients from CT scans and other imaging tests
- When patients receive too much radiation from CT scans by mistake
- How much radiation am I getting with my X-ray, CT scan, or nuclear medicine test?
- CT scans and radiation exposure
- Radiation exposure and x-rays
- Whole body CT scans
- How does cancer screening cause harm?
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