• Email
• Print
• Aa
• Tweet

Americans getting too much radiation from medical tests

Originally published: August 27, 2009 6:57 PM
Updated: August 27, 2009 10:53 PM
By THOMAS H. MAUGH II. Los Angeles Times. Americans may be receiving too much radiation from medical tests whose value has not been proven, researchers report in the New England Journal of Medicine.. More than two-thirds of Americans underwent at least one such imaging procedure in the three years covered by the study, reported Dr. Reza Fazel and colleagues at Emory University School of Medicine.. The two biggest contributors to the radiation exposure are CT scans, which use a series of X-rays to produce a three-dimensional image of the body, and heart perfusion scanning to measure blood flow through the arteries leading to the heart.. Radiation is known to cause cancer, typically years after exposure. By some estimates, medical testing radiation contributes 2 percent of all cancer cases, but experts fear it may be higher in the future as more patients are exposed to these procedures.. They are also concerned because increasing numbers of tests are being performed on younger people, which allows more time for tumors to develop, and on women, who normally live longer than men.. Some studies have suggested the growing number of CT scans being performed results in part from ownership of the machines by physicians, who may view them as a new profit source and prescribe unnecessary tests.. There is also a growing incidence of whole-body CT scans in which physicians check for any signs of potential disease in healthy individuals. Such scans were not included in the report because they are not covered by health insurance.. The researchers studied medical records of 952,420 adults between the ages of 18 and 64 who were insured by United Healthcare plans in Arizona, Texas, Florida and Wisconsin.. Between 2005 and 2007, 655,613 of the adults underwent at least one procedure that exposed them to radiation.