One in 10 blood cancers in kids driven by radiation exposure to medical imaging

While medical imaging can be lifesaving an alarming study showed that one in 10 blood cancers in children is driven by exposure to radiation from medical imagingMedical imaging saves lives by enabling timely diagnosis and effective treatment but it also exposes patients to ionising radiation a known carcinogen particularly through computed tomography CTResearchers from the University of California San Francisco and Davis examined data from nearly four million children and estimated that some 3000 cancers in all may be attributable to radiation exposure from medical imagingThe risk increased proportionally based on the cumulative amount of radiation the children received revealed by the study appearing in The New England Journal of MedicineChildren are particularly vulnerable to radiationinduced cancer due to their heightened radiosensitivity and longer life expectancy said Rebecca SmithBindman radiologist and professor of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at UCSFThe findings underscore the critical need to carefully evaluate and minimise radiation exposure during paediatric imagingThis involves ensuring that imaging is performed only when it provides essential information for the childs care and in cases such as CT scans using the lowest possible radiation doses said SmithBindmanThe researchers cautioned that doctors and parents should avoid excessive radiation doses and minimise exposure when clinically feasibleThe study used a retrospective cohort design looking back at the complete imaging histories of 37 million children who were born between 1996 and 2016Investigators found a significant relationship between cumulative radiation dose and the risk of a hematologic malignancy which includes tumours affecting the blood bone marrow lymph and lymphatic systemFor children who underwent a head CT the researchers attributed about a quarter of the childrens subsequent hematologic malignancies to radiation exposureFor those who had radiographs by contrast they estimated that only a small fraction of the childrens subsequent cancers were associated with radiation exposureGetting one or two head CTs was associated with a 18fold increased risk of a cancer diagnosis and this rose to 35 times for children who received more scans and were therefore exposed to more radiationLymphoid malignancies accounted for 793 per cent while myeloid malignancies and acute leukemia together accounted for 155 per cent About 58 per cent of cancers occurred in males and about half were diagnosed in children under 5This story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed agencies Midday accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability trustworthiness reliability and data of the text Midday managementmiddaycom reserves the sole right to alter delete or remove without notice the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever