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Hospital doctors at risk of cancer from medical ionising radiation

radiation can lead to cancer in doctors.

Radiation in hospitals prompts doctors to demand protection,  JPost , By JUDY SIEGEL-ITZKOVICH  05/26/2011  Doctors say previous wage agreements did not take into account that technological advances make radiation much more widespread and pose greater risk

Radiation is no longer confined only to hospital radiology institutes for diagnoses of various disorders and treating cancer; it is being utilized in operating theaters, catheterization rooms and various other departments and thus endangers doctors and other medical staffers, the Israel Medical Association said on Thursday.
MA chairman Dr. Leonid Eidelman, an anesthesiologist who spends much time in surgical theaters, protested the fact that many physicians are not recognized as at-risk professionals exposed to radiation.

He said that hospital maintenance and supervision of radiation machinery is poor and puts the doctors at risk.
….Dr. Nimrod Rahamimov, another deputy chairman who works as a spinal surgeon, said that in a single operation to stabilize vertebrae, he receives “a third of the radiation that an ordinary person gets during a whole year. If the Treasury official negotiating with us were to get such radiation on the job, he wouldn’t be willing to continue working. But such bureaucrats refuse to recognize us as radiation workers.”

He urged his colleagues to stop agreeing to continue the situation, as the radiation can lead to cancer in doctors.
…..Physicians are supposed to wear “radiation badges” on the job to measure how much radiation they are exposed to, but if the results are “too high,” they are told to take a break, which means that they earn less……
Canadian studies have shown in recent years that a “significant number of physicians who had brain tumors were affected on the side of their heads that was closest to the radiation source,” he continued.

“We tend to accept radiation risks as necessary or the price of working in the profession and to avoid thinking about the problem. But protective equipment has not changed in two decades, and radiation is also used much more frequently and for longer periods.

The problem is that employers prefer to ignore the risks we face.”….Radiation in hospitals prompts doctors to deman… JPost – Health

May 27, 2011 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | health, Israel