Radiation overexposure from CT scans may be more widespread than previously estimated

Moral of the story: Again, watch out for those CT settings.

Source: AMA Morning Rounds 12/15/09

Radiation overexposure from CT scans may be more widespread than previously estimated.

The CBS Evening News (12/14, story 3, 2:20, Lapook) reported, "The problem of too much radiation during CT scans may be more widespread than anyone thought." In fact, "new research...found a wide variation in radiation dose for the most common CT scan like abdomen, pelvis, and chest. A survey of four hospitals found some patients received 13 times more radiation than others for the same type of scan."

        NBC Nightly News (12/14, story 8, 2:10, Bazell) reported, "Depending on the part of the body being scanned, each CT exposes a patient to an amount of radiation equal to between 30 and 440 chest X-rays." But, in a separate study, "researchers calculated that 72 million CT scans are performed in this country a year and concluded that could lead to 29,000 excess cancers and 15,000 excess deaths a year in the future."

        In that study, published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, researchers at the National Cancer Institute "found that people may be exposed to up to four times as much radiation as estimated by earlier studies," USA Today (12/15, Szabo) reports.

        Meanwhile, the second study, appearing in the same journal, of over 1,000 patients at four hospitals, showed that one woman out of 270 and one man out of 600 would suffer from cancer after undergoing a single heart scan at age 40, the Wall Street Journal (12/15, A3, Wang) reports. Researchers noted that the differences in radiation doses may be due to a lack of standardized settings and disparities in technology use.

        The Los Angeles Times (12/15, Maugh) reports that, in an accompanying editorial, Dr. Rita F. Redberg, editor of the journal, noted that "the articles...make clear that there is far more radiation from medical CT scans than has been recognized previously." Redberg said, "Even many otherwise healthy patients are being subjected to the radiation...because emergency [departments] are often sending patients to the CT scanner before they see a doctor."

        Bloomberg News (12/15, Ostrow) reports that in the National Cancer Institute study, "the authors predicted that lung cancer will be the most common radiation-related cancer followed by colon cancer and leukemia." For its part, the FDA "issued interim regulations Dec. 7 requiring closer monitoring of CT scans after more than 250 cases of exposure to excess radiation were reported since October."

        WebMD (12/14, Doheny), MedPage Today (12/14, Neale), NPR (12/15), Modern Healthcare (12/15, Rhea), HealthDay (12/14, Pallarito), and Reuters (12/15, Steenhuysen) also covered the story.