The report from the National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurement is the latest evidence pointing the finger at doctors, who are supposedly overusing diagnostic tests driven by the desire to increase the costs of healthcare in the U.S. at the expense of patients’ health. 

 

Medical tests such as CT Scans or other tests based on radiation are indeed providing doctors with very valuable information on the patient, but overusing the scans increases the risk of illnesses, especially in young people. 

 

The report clearly indicates that, compared to 1980, the radiation level to which Americans are exposed now is seven times higher and the main cause are the medical radiation-based scans. The report was issued Tuesday at the annual meeting of the National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurement in Bethesda, Md.

 

The number of ionizing radiation exposure for Americans that came from medical tests nearly doubled since 2006 and that is “a real big change,” as Dan Strom, scientist with the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, and part of the committee that prepared the report. 

 

The CT scan seems to be the most powerful. The report indicated that the CT scan accounts for as much as 49% of all medical radiation exposure, for about 24% of all sources of radiation exposure, although this type of scans account for only  17 percent of the total medical procedures that expose patients to radiation.

 

Exposure to these types of radiation increases the risk of developing cancer.