Full-Body CT Scans Scale Up Cancer Risk
- Tracy Hampton, PhD
Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text.
Elective full-body computed tomography (CT) scans in healthy individuals have long been controversial because of uncertainties surrounding their ability to detect hidden disease. Now, researchers report that radiation from a single full-body CT examination corresponds to a dose comparable with a level of radiation linked to increased cancer mortality in low-dose atomic bomb survivors from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, in Japan (Radiology. 2004;232:735-738).
Full-body CT scans deliver a radiation dose nearly 100 times that of a typical mammogram. Photo credit: AP/Wide World Photos
The authors question the use of such an expensive procedure of disputed value in asymptomatic people in light of such risk. Full-body CT scans deliver a dose of radiation nearly 100 times that of a typical mammogram.
“There is direct epidemiological evidence that the sorts of doses of relevance for a single full-body CT scan do increase an individual's cancer risk,” said lead investigator David Brenner, PhD, …
