The FDA has urged makers of medical scanning equipment to make new devices that would minimize the radiation dose delivered to children.
Children's hospitals, on the other hand, routinely adjust their machines to compensate for a child's size. General hospitals, where 90% of child imaging occurs, don't always change the settings on their scanners. It's not uncommon for a child to get an adult-sized dose of radiation, especially if they're scanned at a general hospital. Kids are smaller than adults, so they get a higher dose of radiation unless the scanning machine is adjusted for them. Put another way, experts estimate that 10,000 CT scans would lead to one additional case of cancer. The odds that a child will develop a brain tumor or leukemia are very low to begin with, and they're still low, even if that number triples. You may have heard about a study showing that kids who have two to three CT scans were nearly three times as likely to develop a brain tumor or leukemia in the decade following their first scan, compared to children who were not scanned.īut you should know that it's very unlikely that a child will develop a brain tumor or leukemia - scan or no scan. One study showed that kids who went to an ER after suffering a minor head injury were less likely to get a CT scan if they were simply observed in the ER for 4-6 hours - and that observation period didn't compromise their safety. They just need to be watched in a safe setting. "They want an answer right away and that puts a lot of pressure on the doctors taking care of them," Pranikoff says. "People aren't focusing as much on clinical skills like taking a patient's history and doing a physical examination," he says. He says it's partly about doctors' use of technology. Why? Pediatric surgeon Thomas Pranikoff, MD, of Brenner Children's Hospital in Winston-Salem, N.C., has studied that. And that number is rising about 10% per year. About one in eight scans ordered for kids is a CT scan.īecause they spin around the body taking multiple images, CT scans can deliver radiation doses that are up to 200 times higher than an average chest X-ray.Ībout 7 million CT scans are done on U.S. Most of those tests are X-rays, which use relatively low levels of radiation. The average child now gets seven scans that rely on radiation before age 18, one recent study shows. So when are these tests really needed? Here's what you should know. No doubt: X-rays and scans can be helpful, even life-saving. "No patients should be exposed to more radiation than they need at any age," says pediatric radiologist Marta Hernanz-Schulman, MD, chair of the American College of Radiology's Pediatric Imaging Commission. And because kids are still growing, they're more sensitive to radiation. Those tests use radiation that, if exposed to often enough, has been linked to a greater chance of getting cancer later in life. When a child is ill or injured, you want your child to get whatever medical tests are needed, as soon as possible.īut when it comes to imaging tests - such as X-rays, PET scans, and CT scans - the key word is "needed."