Scientists Say F.D.A. Ignored Radiation Warnings (CT scans)

[ensho]

http://www.enn.com/top_stories/article/41191


Urgent warnings by government experts about the risks of routinely using powerful CT scans to screen patients for colon cancer were brushed aside by the Food and Drug Administration, according to agency documents and interviews with agency scientists.

After staying quiet for a year, the scientists say they plan to make their concerns public at a meeting of experts on Tuesday called by the F.D.A. to discuss how to protect patients from unnecessary radiation exposures. The two-day meeting is part of a growing reassessment of the risks of routine radiology. The average lifetime dose of diagnostic radiation has increased sevenfold since 1980, driven in part by the increasing popularity of CT scans. Such scans can deliver the radiation equivalent of 400 chest X-rays.

An estimated 70 million CT (for computed tomography) scans are performed in the United States every year, up from three million in the early 1980s, and as many as 14,000 people may die every year of radiation-induced cancers as a result, researchers estimate.

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Article continues: http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_20550.cfm
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neo cons must own the companies that make the CTs

it took a year but at least they are speaking up now.

wonder how many people got cancer from the scans during that year? and still now?

[Submariner]

1. Aw crap

I had a couple of those CT's from my abdomen down to verify that the lithotripsy operation succeeded in smashing my giant kidney stone to little bits. Now I get to worry about a RAD dose equivalent to 400 chest X-rays? Well that's just peachy f'ing keen. :mad:

[Warpy]

3. Most people will withstand that much and walk away unharmed

and the CT scan remains a very important diagnostic tool.

The problem with it as with all new technologies is that it's been overused on people when it hasn't been medically indicated, when older X-rays would have done the job as well. That wasn't the case in your case when they needed to visualize your innards in cross section, not just as a flat panel, in order to know all the stones had been pulverized enough to clear your system.

The ones who are really at risk are the yuppies who went through the fad of having full body CT scans as a status symbol. The local CT scan doesn't deliver a huge dose of radiation. The full body scan does, and some of those loons were having one every year for a while.

Expressing things in terms of chest X-rays also is a little misleading. Consider that an average air flight exposes you to the radiation of about 8 chest films and that will put it into perspective. Take 50 flights a year and you've gotten that CT scan dose and I'll bet you never knew it. Since cancer isn't epidemic among flight attendants and airline pilots, it's not going to be epidemic among people who have had medically indicated CT scans.

So relax. The CT scan is a valuable tool, yours was medically indicated and the risk from it was entirely acceptable.

[Posteritatis]

2. It's not like the dosage figure isn't common knowledge

Anyone with the initiative to know what a CT scan is knows that much. When I had to get one the rationale behind it and the nature of the process were explained. I've got more important things to worry about than a miniscule, miniscule chance of complications for a routine procedure.