CT scans and radiation

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.

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