US Hospitals Started To Use Safeguards Against High Radiation Doses Of CT.

Print


Didital Radiography newsHospitals in US started to deploy safeguard measures to protect patients, who receive harmful doses of radiation from CT scans and other radiation systems. These hospitals are trying to reduce the radiation exposure especially for people receiving scans on regular basis, by designing and buying new scanners with less radiation exposures. One of these hospitals was Oakwood Hospital, which had spent about $4 million to purchase new CT scanners.

Last year, at 15 hospitals in Michigan, a project had successfully reduced the radiation doses released during heart and blood vessel scans without losing the quality of the images. This process was made by limiting locations of a body facing radiation and determining the doses according to the person’s weight.

A new national campaign, called Image Wisely, will focus on this issue later this month, while, Image Gently, a companion effort introduced in 2009, has put similar basis and created consumer resources for parents of pediatric patients. Several medical tests, combining CT and nuclear medicine scans, using radiation to reach a better image to locate kidney stones, determine artery and valve blockages and pinpoint areas of the brain affected by strokes and head injuries, beside other uses.

The application of tests using radiation eliminates the need for exploratory surgery for a long time. But there are disadvantages, such as errors by the user of the device, repeated tests and scans that can raise the person’s risk for cancer, hair loss, predicted burns, and other problems.

The campaigns look forward to get to older radiologists to participate in certification programs to educate them about recent measures to decrease radiation doses. As Dr. Ella Kazerooni, a University of Michigan professor of radiology, said ”Many physicians are exempt from annual certification requirements because they were grandfathered in when new standards were adopted in the past decade.”

She added also,” reasons for unnecessary testing include a doctor's fear of being sued for not ordering a scan; pressure from patients to have the tests, and referrals by doctors to imaging centers in which they may have a financial interest.” Dr. Souheil Saba, director of advanced CT imaging at St. John Providence Hospital in Southfield, said,” some consumers are aware of the issue, many aren't caught up to ask questions yet,"




Array
(
    [type] => 2048
    [message] => Non-static method JResponse::sendHeaders() should not be called statically
    [file] => /home/hihadmin/public_html/libraries/joomla/environment/response.php
    [line] => 206
)