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Statement on Radiation Safety in Medical Imaging
The issue of radiation risks to patients receiving diagnostic radiology procedures has been raised by the public media recently. In these reports, the benefits of medical imaging are seldom mentioned. Quite often, the hazards of medical exposure are exaggerated and the analogy used could be misleading to members of the public. This could raise unnecessary concerns to patients, especially parents of young patients and deter them from taking needed medical exposure. This in turn could put their lives at bigger risks.
Medical exposure such as CT is a vital and accurate tool for rapid diagnostic evaluation of illness or injury. All medical exposures when properly performed are individually optimized such that the radiation dose and the risks to an individual patient are small. It is important that the patients, particularly parents of young patients discuss concerns they have with the referring doctors and/or radiologists and weigh the benefits of a radiological examination against any potential risk.
The cancer risks of ionizing radiation are well documented in the literature (e.g. international and national authoritative documents published by ICRP, UNESCEAR and BEIR). There is general agreement that epidemiological methods used for the estimation of cancer risks do not have the power to directly reveal such risks in the dose range up to around 100 mSv. The amount of radiation involved in a diagnostic imaging procedure is well below this dose level. The carcinogenic risks, if any, associated with medical imaging are very small with current imaging technologies. Recently, professional organizations, including the International Organization for Medical Physics, American Association of Physicists in Medicine and the Health Physics Society, have released position statements in an effort to illuminate the controversy over the risks of low-level radiation exposures. One should refer to these documents when addressing the issue of health hazards and benefits of medical imaging.
Although, radiation risks are small in medical imaging, this Institution recommends that radiation protection principles and procedures should always be applied in the clinic. These include justification of every medical exposure, application of dose optimization and monitoring, and implementation of appropriate quality assurance measures.