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Radiation Risks from Cardiac Imaging
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MedpageToday.com REPORTS HERE that "nearly one in 10 adults under age 65 gets radiation exposure from cardiac imaging over a given three-year period...researchers analyzed administrative claims from a major U.S. insurer for more than 90,000 nonelderly adults who underwent at least one cardiac imaging procedure and...found 89.0 per 1,000 received an effective dose of ionizing radiation from the procedures greater than the background radiation from natural sources."

"Another 3.3 per 1,000 got cumulative annual doses above the upper limit for occupational exposure averaged over five years..."

"Extrapolating these results to the U.S. population in the same age range suggested that 636,000 people would be at risk from high cumulative effective doses of ionizing radiation from cardiac imaging, which the researchers called 'considerable.'"

"But Matthew J. Budoff, MD, and Mohit Gupta, MD, both of Harbor UCLA Medical Center in Torrance, Calif., cautioned in the editorial 'that the entire premise that radiation doses from medical testing causes cancers remains hypothetical.'  Although ionizing radiation at high levels like atomic bomb exposure causes cancer and death, "the relationship between low-dose medical imaging and harm has never been established."

"The researchers analyzed administrative claims from one of the largest private healthcare insurers [and] included all 952,420 adults ages 18 to 64 in Arizona, Dallas, Orlando, South Florida, and Wisconsin who were alive and continuously insured by the company from the beginning of 2005 to the end of 2007."

"Overall, 9.5% of the insured adults ages 18 to 64 got at least one cardiac radiology procedure that exposed them to radiation over the three-year period for a population-based rate of rate of 60.3 per 1,000 enrollees each year."

"The proportion of individuals who had at least one procedure over the three-year period rose from 1.5% in those 18 to 34 years old to 20.9% in 55- to 64-year-olds."

"Alternative imaging modalities without ionizing radiation that provide similar clinical information for informed decision-making may be a better choice for these younger patients, the researchers suggested. 'For example, alternatives such as stress echocardiography or, in some cases, exercise testing alone without imaging could serve as alternatives to myocardial perfusion imaging scans.'

 
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