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Unnecessary scans pose health risk, UVic study shows

Unnecessary scans pose health risk, UVic study shows

By Pamela Fayerman, Vancouver SunApril 22, 2009

VANCOUVER — Health consumers are largely naive about radiation and other risks that come with full-body and other screening tests marketed by private clinics, a University of Victoria health policy researcher says.

Alan Cassels, co-author of a recent report published by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, said people seem to think early detection of any disease is safe and always a good thing if it is under the guise of so-called preventive medicine.

“But offering for sale [for up to $2,500] heart, lung or full-body scans to healthy people with no symptoms is questionable, controversial, unregulated and not even recommended by professional associations of radiologists,” he said…………………………………

A recent article in The Medical Post, a publication primarily for doctors, stated that one CT of the heart was equivalent to about 600 chest X-rays.

Radiation dose from imaging equipment is measured in millisieverts (mSv). A CT of the heart exposes an individual to an estimated radiation dose of 12 mSv. It’s been estimated that a person living in Vancouver has a background radiation of about 2.5 mSv in a year.

In the journal Radiology this month, Boston researchers reported that patients who have many CT scans in their lifetime may be at increased risk for cancer from the accumulated exposure to radiation…………..

……………..The American Heart Association recently stated that radiation exposure has increased by more than 700 per cent in the past 20 years, much of it due to CT scans.

Unnecessary scans pose health risk, UVic study shows

April 23, 2009 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | 2 WORLD, environment | antinuclear, nuclear, radiation, radioactive