The FDA reports that it is launching a new initiative to minimize damage from the ionizing radiation that comes from defective CT scans. Part of the campaign includes promoting personal medical imaging history cards. They will record the number of images one receives in a certain time period to minimize the cumulative number of radiation exposures. The initiative follows a series of reports from the Los Angeles Times that 260 patients were accidentally exposed to more than eight times the normal dose over a period of 18 months.
The FDA will hold public meetings March 30 and 31 to consider suggestions about further training requirements for CT scan operators. Also the groundwork must be laid for a national database to pre-determine the optimal dosage for any given procedure. The more radiation, the clearer the picture, but the manual override by operators is what has caused the overexposure problem. The use of CT scans has tripled since 1995 and many critics believe the review doesn’t go far enough. Up to one-third of the 70 million scans in the U.S. annually may be unnecessary. A 2007 study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, finds that up to 0.4% of cancers in the U.S. may be due to unnecessary scans. As it stands now, without a patient history card, it is up to the patient to remind medical technicians and their doctor of the number of scans they have received to avoid multiple, cumulative exposures.
Source Articles: http://abcnews.go.com/Health/CancerPreventionAndTreatment/fda-radiation-safety-standards-popular-rays/story?id=9795804
http://www.kaiserhealthnews.org/Daily-Reports/2010/February/10/FDA-and-medical-radiation.aspx
