by
Gus Iversen, Editor in Chief | November 29, 2017
From the November 2017 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine
Increased scrutiny of widely held notions of radiation dose danger
This year has seen experts taking up the controversial cause of questioning the widely held belief that medical imaging dose exposure is dangerous.
Through respected platforms like the Journal of Nuclear Medicine (JNM), researchers in 2017 made the case that sound evidence does not exist to justify the level of public anxiety associated with imaging scans. They argue that being overly cautious actually hurts patients, because fear leads to not receiving the proper diagnostic exams and therefore may lead to other issues.
The basis for the argument has to do with the linear non-threshold model, which essentially states that if a large dose of radiation is very bad then a small dose of radiation must be a little bad, an assumption that some experts claim is not based on scientific evidence.
“I really want to stir [it] up and put an end to this controversy,” Jeffry Siegel, Ph.D., president and CEO of the consulting firm Nuclear Physics, and lead author of the JNM study, told HCB News. “I can’t believe this linear no-threshold model debate has been going on for so long ... reinforcing radiophobia that has parents telling their pediatrician they don’t want their child to have a needed CT scan.”
In September, British researchers published findings in The Proceedings of the Royal Society B. showing that low-level ionizing radiation exposure poses less risk to health than obesity, smoking or air pollution, while drawing up a concise perspective on the subject that can be understood by readers outside the study of medicine.
Angela McLean, a professor of mathematical biology at the University of Oxford and the lead author of that study, told HCB News that although the study is not meant to recommend changes in policy, she hopes it will create more informed discussions on the use and risks of low-level ionizing radiation.
