We Are Giving Ourselves Cancer
nytimes.com
We Are Giving Ourselves Cancer
1–10 of 167 posts
Re: We Are Giving Ourselves Cancer
#2I have no doubt that patients are getting exposed to more radiation via imaging than they need to.
However, every decision in medicine is (or should be) a risk-vs-benefit analysis. Cancer is not the only thing you can die from. If you suffer a head injury and end up in the ER and get a CT scan, you may increase your long-term risk of cancer, but you are also drastically reducing the risk of dying from a brain hemorrhage that couldn't be identified by any other method.
Re: We Are Giving Ourselves Cancer
#3>A single CT scan exposes a patient to the amount of radiation that epidemiologic evidence shows can be cancer-causing
That does not look right to me. A single CT scan is 2-7 millisieverts, and exposures under 13 can not be linked to health effects - look for UNSCEAR in http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sievert
If you do the math by ICRP formulae, you end up with increase chance of cancer of 1 in 2600 over the next 20 years from a single 7ms CT scan today. This compares favorably with "natural" risk that is 1 in 10 without any extra exposure above background radiation.
Now if you do a scan every year for the next 20 years your chances go up to 1 in 130. So there is something to worry about, but article overstates the cause.
Re: We Are Giving Ourselves Cancer
#4This goes beyond the medical field. ProPublica did a story about how X-rays are becoming more common in law-enforcement and border security as well.
http://www.propublica.org/article/drive-by-scanning-official...
Re: We Are Giving Ourselves Cancer
#5[deleted]
Re: We Are Giving Ourselves Cancer
#6The article's first sentence annoys me right off the bat:
"Despite great strides in prevention and treatment, cancer rates remain stubbornly high and may soon surpass heart disease as the leading cause of death in the United States."
This seems to be implying that cancer death rates are growing and will soon "surpass" those of heart disease. While the article is technically correct, this is due to the fact that deaths per year from heart disease have been going down in the US since 1975 (see here: http://www.heart.org/idc/groups/heart-public/@wcm/@sop/@smd/...)
It's irritating because the article's premise is flawed. It also gives no statistical data to back the claim that cancer rates are increasing.
Re: We Are Giving Ourselves Cancer
#7Of course I'd rather get a CT scan sooner than an MRI later if I'm a serious trauma patient. But CT scans are way over-used for procedures that are not time-critical.
Re: We Are Giving Ourselves Cancer
#8>A single CT scan exposes a patient to the amount of radiation that epidemiologic evidence shows can be cancer-causing That does not look right to me. A single CT scan is 2-7 millisieverts, and exposures under 13 can not be linked to health effects - look for UNSCEAR in http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sievert If you do the math by ICRP formulae, you end up with increase chance of cancer of 1 in 2600 over the next 20 y…
> Now if you do a scan every year for the next 20 years your chances go up to 1 in 130
Unless the article is wrong about the number of CT scans many people are getting, that's going to result is a huge number of avoidable cancer cases.
Re: We Are Giving Ourselves Cancer
#9The article's first sentence annoys me right off the bat: "Despite great strides in prevention and treatment, cancer rates remain stubbornly high and may soon surpass heart disease as the leading cause of death in the United States." This seems to be implying that cancer death rates are growing and will soon "surpass" those of heart disease. While the article is technically correct, this is due to the fact that death…
It also seems to imply that medical tests which expose us to radiation are the cause of supposedly increasing cancer rates... which _seems_ a bit alarmist?
Re: We Are Giving Ourselves Cancer
#10>A single CT scan exposes a patient to the amount of radiation that epidemiologic evidence shows can be cancer-causing That does not look right to me. A single CT scan is 2-7 millisieverts, and exposures under 13 can not be linked to health effects - look for UNSCEAR in http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sievert If you do the math by ICRP formulae, you end up with increase chance of cancer of 1 in 2600 over the next 20 y…
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