AAPM STATEMENT ON RADIATION DOSE
Statement seeks to put fears of CT radiation dose and dose-related effects into perspective and to correct potential misunderstandings
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
For More Information, Please Contact:
Jason Socrates Bardi,
American Institute of Physics
College Park, MD (December 21, 2009) -- A panel of experts at the American Association of Physicists in Medicine (AAPM) has issued a statement calling for an open discussion of the facts about radiation hazards from computed tomography (CT) scanning in light of recent public concerns and news reports about radiation dose.
Medical physicists are partnering with technologists, radiologists, regulators, manufacturers, administrators, and others to strive to ensure that CT scans are only given when medically indicated -- and when they are performed that the minimum amount of radiation is used to obtain the necessary diagnostic information.
The AAPM statement warns of "several misleading statements made with respect to radiation hazards from CT scanning" after a recent FDA alert as well as two articles in a leading medical journal called public attention to the safety of CT scans, which require the use of X-rays and can result in a small, but non-zero, risk of causing cancer.
The Science Council and Executive Committee of the AAPM issued its statement out of concern that incomplete or incorrect information may lead some people to forgo necessary scans. The full statement appears here.
"CT scans are valuable, life-saving procedures that play a critical role in saving the lives of thousands of people every day," says Dr. John M. Boone, chairman of AAPM’s science council and vice chairman of radiology at the University of California, Davis Medical Center. Some 70 million CT scans are performed each year in the United States, he adds, and most are medically necessary for diagnosing diseases and assessing how people respond to treatment.
One issue that the AAPM statement addresses is an alert that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued after 206 people undergoing diagnosis and treatment of stroke were exposed to high doses of radiation at one hospital in Southern California. The exposures caused hair loss and skin reddening in some of them. Similar incidents have since been identified at other hospitals, including two additional ones in Southern California.
"There is no excuse for such radiation overexposures. Improved training as well as new machine interface features may be needed to prevent future occurrences," notes the AAPM statement. "News of these incidents has led to a nationwide mobilization of medical physicists, working with hospital administrators, radiologists, and CT technologists to get a better handle on CT protocols at each individual institution."
The AAPM statement also addresses two recent back-to-back articles published in the journal Archives of Internal Medicine. These articles project, based on a number of assumptions, that the use of diagnostic CT in 2007 could lead to thousands of future cases of cancer in the United States.
The AAPM statement takes issue with the assumptions used to calculate these risks. It also notes the difficulty in determining whether radiation or some other factor was the cause of a person’s cancer -- as opposed to incidences of car accidents or shootings where the causes of death are unequivocal and unambiguous.
"Because radiation-induced cancers present the same clinically as normally occurring cancers, there is no way to know who died from a radiation induced cancer and who died from a naturally occurring cancer," the statement reads. "This issue is compounded by the fact that the number of theoretically predicted radiation induced cancers is tiny compared to the very large cancer incidence rate in humans (~25-30 percent), making the impact of radiation on cancer rate very hard to measure."
In the end, says Boone, the articles focused on risk, but they did not discuss the benefit of CT scans. "Nobody denies that CT exams should be performed only when necessary," he says, "but when necessary, the diagnostic information provided by a CT scan can be life saving."
RECOMMENDATIONS FOR PATIENTS
One thing that medical physicists and everybody in the medical community agrees upon is that CT scans should only be performed when medically necessary. Some specific suggestions for people who have had CT scans or who are slated for CT exams in the next few weeks include:
- Discuss with your doctors not only the radiation risks of the CT examination but also the risks of not having the diagnostic information that the CT would provide;
- Find out if all appropriate measures for dose reduction have been used (e.g., is the scan limited to the region of the body that concerns the medical question);
- Verify that the CT technique factors are adjusted according to the size of the patient’s body;
- Make sure that repeated CT scans are avoided whenever possible
- Consult a radiologist if there are any remaining questions about dose reduction or the necessity of a CT scan.
Patients and referring physicians should also ask if the facility is accredited by the American College of Radiology -- an assurance that it practices state of the art, low dose CT.
The complete statement of the AAPM Science Council and Executive Committee is available here.
For background on CT radiation dose, see here.
AAPM is hosting an interdisciplinary CT Dose Summit on April 29 - 30 to provide education to the imaging community. More details will be available in the coming months at http://www.aapm.org.
To arrange an interview with Dr. Boone or another AAPM spokesperson, please contact Jason Bardi at email@example.com or 858-775-4080.
ABOUT MEDICAL PHYSICISTS
If you ever had a mammogram, ultrasound, X-ray, MRI, PET scan, or known someone treated for cancer, chances are reasonable that a medical physicist was working behind the scenes to make sure the imaging and treatment procedures were as effective as possible. Medical physicists help to develop new imaging techniques, improve existing ones, and assure the safety of radiation used in medical procedures in radiology, radiation oncology and nuclear medicine. They collaborate with radiation oncologists to design cancer treatment plans. They provide routine quality assurance and quality control on radiation equipment and procedures to ensure that cancer patients receive the prescribed dose of radiation to the correct location. They also contribute to the development of physics intensive therapeutic techniques, such as stereotactic radiosurgery and prostate seed implants for cancer for example.
A qualified medical physicist (QMP) is someone who is competent to practice independently one or more of the clinical subfields of medical physics, documented by specialty training and board certification. More information about the responsibilities of medical physicists is available here.
The American Association of Physicists in Medicine (AAPM) is a scientific, educational, and professional organization of more than 7,000 medical physicists. Headquarters are located at the American Center for Physics in College Park, MD. Publications include a scientific journal ("Medical Physics"), technical reports, and symposium proceedings.