National Cancer Institute issues warning on pediatric CTs

Scans conducted at adult settings expose children to unnecessary cancer risk, the NCI says.

By John Dudley Miller, AMNews correspondent. Oct. 7, 2002.

Dial it down is the message the National Cancer Institute is sending to doctors who order or perform computed tomography scans on children.

In a guide sent to 158,000 physicians, the NCI notes that CT settings frequently are not lowered from adult levels when scans are performed on children. Failure to adjust scanners exposes children to more radiation than necessary and increases their risk of future cancer, according to the guide, which was co-sponsored by the Society of Pediatric Radiologists.

For instance, adult CT settings give four times as much radiation as is necessary to image a newborn's abdomen, and they give twice as much as is needed to scan its head, the guide indicates.

The NCI and SPR expect that those higher doses could double to quadruple the tiny added chance of dying from cancer later in life that a properly adjusted CT scan gives to a baby.

"Minimizing radiation exposure from pediatric CT, whenever possible, will reduce the projected number of CT-related cancer deaths," the document states.

The guide cites the latest data from research on Japanese A-bomb survivors, which suggests that of every 2,500 newborns who receive a head scan at adult settings, one can be expected to die prematurely from cancer because of the scan. But the older and larger a child is when scanned, the lower the danger. So a 15-year-old getting the same scan would incur only half that risk. And some experts believe that even these numbers exaggerate the risk.

The federal government does not regulate the radiation dose of CT scanners. [...]