CT radiation dose report released by American Association of Physicists in Medicine

Promotes best image quality with least radiation dose

College Park, MD (February 15, 2008) -- Aiming to promote the best medical imaging practices nationwide and help ensure the health and safety of the millions of people who undergo computed tomography (CT) scans each year in the United States, the American Association of Physicists in Medicine (AAPM) has issued a CT radiation dose management report this month recommending standardized ways of reporting doses and educating users on the latest dose reduction technology.

AAPM is the premiere professional association of medical physicists and includes both scientists and board-certified health professionals who care for patients.

Targeted at radiologists, medical physicists, and other medical professionals, the report outlines the best ways to measure, manage, and prescribe radiation dosages. It also gives an overview of ways that doctors can optimize modern CT scanners to get the most bang for the buck -- reducing to a bare minimum the amount of radiation to which patients are exposed while still allowing them to benefit from the technique's life-saving ability to image inside the human body.

"The medical applications of CT have grown tremendously in the last decade as the technology had become more and more sophisticated," says Mayo Clinic Medical Physicist Cynthia McCollough, who was chair of the AAPM Task Group that authored the report. "In the era of increasingly personalized medicine, the report provides a roadmap for doctors and medical physicists to tailor the CT radiation dosages to individuals."

The report was generated by a committee of medical physicists with special expertise in CT technology and its clinical uses. It can be downloaded from the AAPM website (see: http://www.aapm.org/pubs/reports/RPT_96.pdf).

CT SCANS AND RADIATION

The benefits of CT scans are enormous, and the technology has revolutionized medicine in the last generation because it can provide cross-sectional snapshots deep inside someone's body with unprecedented clarity. These images help doctors diagnose unseen illnesses and injuries, and they guide treatment for millions of people a year in the United States.

In the last few years, reports in the medical literature and in the popular press have challenged public perceptions of CT scans by raising questions of risk related to the fact that CT scanners use X rays, which in high doses can damage the DNA inside cells.

However, says McCollough, the benefits of receiving a medically justified CT scan far outweighs the risk associated with the low levels of radiation used. To put this into perspective, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) considers the risk of absorbed X rays from CT scans to be very small (see: http://www.fda.gov/cdrh/ct/risks.html).