Patients undergoing a computerized tomography scan, or CT scan, are exposed to 150 times the amount of radiation compared to a singular X-ray and researchers from the Stanford University School of Medicine have determined that the effects could lead to cell damage and mutation.
In the past two decades, the use of CT scans has increased, most commonly because doctors require medical imaging for detecting diseases. But while radiation for this is of low-dose, previously no tools existed to determine the effects of such type of radiation.
"We now have the technology that allows us to look at very subtle, cell-level changes," said Joseph Wu, Stanford Cardiovascular Institute director, according to CBS News.
The researchers looked into the blood samples of 67 individuals before and after undergoing a CT scan and saw that there was a significant increase in cell damage, but while the body has the ability to repair these, a small percentage of cells also die after the scans. Scientists have yet to study further if this cellular damage increases cancer risk.
"It's very hard to track single cells and see what happens to them -- if they develop into cancer over time," said Patricia Nguyen, an assistant professor of cardiovascular medicine at Stanford and lead author to the study, via Fox News. "It's probably not feasible using current technology."
Cell damage, in itself, already causes problems to health, as it can lead to a lowered immune system that puts a person at risk for infection.
"Our research supports the idea that maybe physicians shouldn't just use the best image quality in all cases. We shouldn't eliminate CT scans because they're obviously important, but you can make it safer by reducing the doses, by getting better machines and technology, and by giving patients something to protect them," said Nguyen, via Science Daily.
"There's a lot of concern among physicians and patients, in terms of radiation doses from CT scans," Wu said in the Fox report. "In the past, we didn't really have a good idea as to how much potential damage there was; I think this study sheds some additional light into it."
"We'll see as technology evolves in the future, radiologists and cardiologists will be able to implement some of these new imaging sequencing to provide as low a dose as possible to the patient," Wu told Fox News.
The study was published in Journal of the American College of Cardiology: Cardiovascular Imaging.
