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The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
bythsths ( 31372 ) writes:
> 93 million CT examinations were carried out in 2023
So the average person gets a CT scan every three years? Over 20 in their lifetime? That is crazy - the risk of a CT scan is pretty well understood, so why do we use it like candy?
European countries do far fewer CT scans, with better health outcomes, although the numbers are rising, too.
byplate_o_shrimp ( 948271 ) writes:
I'm currently undergoing radiation treatment for head & neck cancer. They did a CT scan on me before treatment started to get a good image of everything. I get 7 weeks of daily (weekdays) radiation, before each of which they do "mini CT" to make sure that I'm positioned properly in the machine. They'll do another at the end of the treatment. That's 37 CT scans in the span of about 2 months.
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byJoeRobe ( 207552 ) writes:
I'm sorry you're fighting cancer. Best of luck to you.
I think your example is why these number seems crazy at first blush. 90 million CT scans is an average of 1 in 4 Americans getting a CT scan. That's not reasonable. But of course it's not a normal distribution, it's one thats heavily skewed by people with serious health conditions for which CT scans are providing a benefit, and could die of other causes (or maybe cancer) if they didn't get the CT scans.
By this argument, one could say that chemotherapy is
byThurstonMoore ( 605470 ) writes:
Cancer patients are probably what have inflated the number of CTs. The headline is clickbait.
byOl Olsoc ( 1175323 ) writes:
I'm currently undergoing radiation treatment for head & neck cancer. They did a CT scan on me before treatment started to get a good image of everything. I get 7 weeks of daily (weekdays) radiation, before each of which they do "mini CT" to make sure that I'm positioned properly in the machine. They'll do another at the end of the treatment. That's 37 CT scans in the span of about 2 months.
Hoping it all works out for you, bro.
byAgateDesert ( 10211245 ) writes:
Mod this up. 37 scans in 2 months for cancer treatment, I had no idea. This definitely colors the story differently.
byOddroot ( 4245189 ) writes:
I'm currently undergoing radiation treatment for head & neck cancer. They did a CT scan on me before treatment started to get a good image of everything. I get 7 weeks of daily (weekdays) radiation, before each of which they do "mini CT" to make sure that I'm positioned properly in the machine. They'll do another at the end of the treatment. That's 37 CT scans in the span of about 2 months.
I also am sorry that you are having to deal with this, cancer sucks and I pray the treatments will be successful.
For what it is worth, an additional thing to keep in mind is that not all CTs are the same level, degree, or hazard of exposure. I was in a very severe wreck in 2010 and had to get a full thoracic scan, that is an exposure of something like 500mrem. The work I do professionally involves being around radiation-generating machinery sometimes, and our administrative control limit was 1500mrem per ye
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