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If a friend or loved one were taken to the emergency room after a car accident and given 1,000 X-rays, you might be alarmed, but that's about the typical radiation exposure that patients with multiple trauma receive, according to the latest science.

Patients are exposed to significant radiation when they present with multiple trauma in the emergency room. Since the patients often undergo multiple CT and X-ray studies they may, in a single episode be exposed to radiation exceeding 1,000 individual X-rays, according to a study in the Annals of Emergency Medicine. Pediatric patients are especially susceptible to the increased cancer risk brought on by such exposure.

The study was run by Dr. James Winslow, Wake Forest University. He found that, while the average person living in the United States receives about 3 millisieverts of radiation each year, trauma patients get an average of 40 millisieverts.

"Multi-trauma patients are at high risk of life-threatening injuries, which clearly justifies aggressive testing to determine the best course of treatment using all the tools available in the emergency department," Dr. Winslow said. "However, physicians should consider the long-term risks and benefits of exposing their patients to the high levels of radiation emitted by the series of studies informally referred to as the 'pan scan,' or computed tomography of the head, neck, chest, abdomen and pelvis."

Read DOTmed News coverage of the topic of radiation exposure and what medical imaging companies are doing to address it:
www.dotmed.com/news/story/5168.