I am writing today to announce the closure of the New Mexico Independent. After three and a half years of operation in New Mexico, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news…
While environmental activists played their part yesterday during demonstrations at the capitol building, going so far as to dress up as solar panels and to sing the tune of “You Are My Sunshine,” their counterparts, the anti-cap-and-trade contingency who has…
Roughly one quarter of University of New Mexico students are unimpressed with the state’s flagship public school, according to a survey that questioned college students about their higher education experiences.
Americans’ single largest source of radiation is medical imaging, and Americans get more of it than people in any other country.
That is largely due to the popularity of Computed Tomography (CT) scans in the U.S. CT scans can offer better detail than x-rays, and that sometimes saves lives, experts say.
But it also comes at a cost, warns the U.S. Veterans Administration’s chief radiologist for New Mexico: much higher radiation doses.
CT scans involve radiation doses up to 100 times as high as those from traditional x-ray imaging, The Independent’s review of medical journal articles shows. While a single CT scan is unlikely to cause cancer, repeated CT scanning can appreciably increase lifetime cancer risks, studies show — particularly for young patients.
Patients need to take a proactive approach to limiting their medical radiation doses, the U.S. Veterans Administration’s New Mexico chief radiologist Fred Mettler cautioned in an Associated Press story Monday.
“You should question everything: what’s the dose, why am I getting it,” Mettler said. “You should be an informed consumer.”
Repeated CT scans to the abdomen and chest are a particular concern because they contain numerous organs that may develop radiation-related cancers, Mettler said.
“You shouldn’t get too excited about feet and knee X-rays,” Mettler said.
Patients should ask their doctors why an x-ray would not suffice, what advantages a CT scan will offer, and whether the doctor has a financial stake in prescribing CT scans. Patients should also ask whether or not Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) is available instead of CT, since MRI involves no ionizing radiation.
Doctors who own their own CT equipment are four times as likely to prescribe CT scans, according to medical journal articles reviewed by The Independent.
Mettler is a U.S. representative for radiation safety to the United Nations.
