Hello bOObs Bloggettes:
I’m reposting this blog as my family had and yet another run in with unneeded medical radiation scans this past week. This time it was a loved one of mine who took a fall. Even though the ER docs were told this person hadn’t hit his head, they somehow snuck this patient off when the family advocate wasn’t watching and…BAM! CT scan to the head, a test that contains tons of radiation. And this is the second time in 2 years. So here are some other similar personal stories for you to mull over:
Anytime you come in contact with medicine these days it seems they want to scan something.
Let me first share a few personal stories of my own (some of these have already been shared in past blogs, so excuse the redundancy):
Story #1) When I had a swollen lymph gland under my jaw for months, I began to think I had a dental problem. I was meeting with my GP doc about something else and casually mentioned this. She felt the gland and said I should immediately go and get a head/neck CT scan — which has tons of radiation. I said, er, no thank you; I’ll go to the dentist first. She reiterated that I should get it checked out right away in case it was cancer somewhere, and that head/neck cancers were on the rise. I said, yes I know that, but I don’t want to get cancer from the high-dose scan if I didn’t already have cancer.
Fast forward a week or two later at the dentist: Your teeth are a mess! I was told. You need deep-scale cleaning at about $2,000 (ouch). I was perplexed as to how this happened because my teeth rarely had problems. Have you had any radiation the past year? he asked. Why yes, I have; they thought I was having a heart attack, but then regardless of finding nothing, they wanted to do a stress test using radioisotopes. High-dose or low-dose? I asked the hospital’s radiologist. I was assured it was low-dose — BEEEEEP! Wrong answer. It was one of the highest radiative tests you can undergo. Apparently, my teeth demineralized from all the radiation and were left susceptible to bacteria; thus, I ended up with bad plaque problem below the gum line. Needless to say, after the Deep Clean, my gland went back to normal size. And I was able to avoid all that additional radiation which caused the darn problem in the first place! Whew.
NOTE: I found out later that I could’ve done an echocardiogram (an ultrasound) without any radiation instead of the treadmill with radioisotopes, but the radiologist had assured me the latter was the only test I could take when I asked him this point blank. Argh…
Story #2) I was told after my second “DEXA bone scan” (which checks women for bone loss as they get older) that I had osteoporosis all over the place: My back, my hips, and especially my wrists. In fact, I was told by my doctor, if I fell on my wrists they would shatter into a million pieces! So don’t fall! was her adamant advice. I said no thank you to the bone-building drugs I was offered and went on my merry way.
Fast forward a year later: I was out hiking at top speed and stepped over a log — but my sneaker hit a sawed off limb that I didn’t see and BOOM! I went crashing down the hill, all the weight of my entire body landing on my left wrist. I was sure it was broken, maybe even “shattered”. My sister convinced me to take an ambulance (high drama) to the ER, where they took an X-ray…which showed not one darn thing. My wrist hadn’t shattered at all, it was just a very painful sprain.
So, I am now forever sworn off of those lovely DEXA scan machines that, as far as I’m concerned, don’t do anything but give you radiation all over your body. What a quick Google search (and per radiation specialists) says of radiation amounts for DEXA compared to other scans is this: “DEXA—Whole body 0.003 mSv. Extremity (hand, foot, etc.) x ray—0.001 mSv. Dental X Ray—0.005 mSv.” But they’re talking about scattered radiation (in mSv) here and not the absorbed dose, so I bet if I dove further into this I’d find DEXA isn’t as “low-dose” as they’re professing (see my previous blog of the difference between scattered vs. absorbed radiation — the latter is a LOT higher and the one we need to be concerned about as it can cause radiation-induced cancer).
Story #3) My 96 year old father was in the ER having collapsed on the floor one morning. The ER docs had already figured it was a cardiac problem, but wanted to continue doing high-dose scans on him. He’d already had a head CT scan and now they wanted to do a CT of his chest. I said, How about an MRI instead? His leukemia is in remission right now and we’re trying to keep it that way. The doctor tried to comfort me by saying that “his cancer wouldn’t return for another 5 years due to the scan.” In other words…well, you get the drift.
***
As my doctor mentioned above, head and neck cancers are on the rise — even in small children. What the heck is going on? Well, for one thing, have you noticed how dentists have gone a wee crazy with the X-rays? Those 3D machines have a lot more radiation than the old type and most dentists don’t realize this because the ADA puts it into terms of scattered vs. absorbed radiation dose going directly into such places as your thyroid and your brain and your throat and other radiation-sensitive tissue. In fact, a radiologist that I interviewed confided that he’d just had his thyroid recently removed, which was fairly common practice in his field, he said. “One of the hazards of the job”, as he put it. Ouch.
Let’s look at an article in the New Eng. Journal of Medicine (one of the top 5 journals in the world). This is one of many journal articles I came across, which voices the concern of researchers and doctors over the amount of needless radiation given by the needless medical scans readily doled out:
Here’s a summary of the 2007 paper: “The number of computed tomographic (CT) studies performed is increasing rapidly. Because CT scans involve much higher doses of radiation than plain films, we are seeing a marked increase in radiation exposure in the general population. Epidemiologic studies indicate that the radiation dose from even two or three CT scans results in a detectable increase in the risk of cancer, especially in children.”
I pulled this article up readily a few years ago, but now you have to pay to read it. But here are some other notes I came across that I’d made at that time. Per the paper:
About 20 million adults and 1 million children per year are being irradiated needlessly, subjecting them to future cancers.
It continues that about a third of all CT scans are probably not justified by medical need. This article has been cited about 10,000 by the researchers peers. That’s very significant.
[REF: N Engl J Med 2007; 357:2277-2284
DOI: 10.1056/NEJMra072149
“Computed Tomography — An Increasing Source of Radiation Exposure”
David J. Brenner, Ph.D., D.Sc., and Eric J. Hall, D.Phil., D.Sc.]
In addition, remember the blog I sent out about “kickbacks” for certain medical procedures? Well, scans are one of them. As I said on that blog, I’m not ever sure if the doctor is really thinking that the patient needs the scan or if they’re looking at their bottom line income. This Conflict of Interest in the health field needs to be corrected by Congress as it’s doing nothing but harming patients.
bOObs BOTTOM LINE: Make sure you really need a scan, especially if it’s a CT scan, before you receive one. Ask the doctor if there’s any other non-radiative scan that does roughly the same thing first.
Blog at you soon, thanks for reading and helping to spread the word! (Please see the “share” links below.) And we’d love to hear comments from you! (see below as well)
Stay healthy,
Megan
Megan Smith, M.S.
Director, bOObs: The War on Women’s Breasts
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2 Comments
Gina · September 30, 2022 at 12:18 pm
Hi Megan, I stumbled across your blog while doing research these past 4 years. I was diagnosed with Breast Cancer on 9/19/2018. Then had my Bilateral Mastectomy 4/3/2019 which going into was told if you have the Bilateral Mastectomy you won’t even need radiation. I got the phone call 3 days post-op oops sorry it’s now this type of Breast Cancer and you now need ALL modalities(Chemo, Radiation, etc) of treatment. Which of course turned my world upside down yet again. As you can see by the dates I didn’t rush into surgery as they wanted me to, I took my time because cancer DOES NOT grow overnight! Anyway, I went thru the 2 years of chemo..one year of infusions and then one year of taking chemo meds(6 pills daily) at home. I went for a second opinion on the Radiation and as it turned out was informed that Radiation would be of absolutely no benefit to me. I obviously decided to skip it! and so glad I did. Then fast forward to 10/20/2022 I was then diagnosed(found through a PET) with Thyroid Cancer and had a Total Thyroidectomy on 12/28/2020. Just wanted to give you a little bit of my background. Now since that first 9/19/2018 diagnosis which was just 4yrs ago, I can’t tell you how many scans I have had done. I have had just non stop barage of health scares or concerns or whatever the hec you want to call them these past 4 years and I am just plain tired!! One of these issues being this stupid very severe abdominal pain that started in May 2022 and after trying to be strong and wait out the pain for 13 hrs the second time June 3 when an episode came on I drove to the ER where btw like you say they want to SCAN everything and they did and found nothing. I then went to the ER again on July 18 this time being admitted “because we really need to figure out what is going on with you” which yes I couldn’t agree more, as I can’t keep coming to the ER with this pain we need to figure it out. As I am sure you can understand, I am so flipping tired of getting “band-aids” put on EVERYTHING. So check this out, when they had admitted me on 7/18 of course again they did a crap ton of x-rays, US, CT’s, and all kinds of other tests and NOTHING showed up and it was definitely not my gallbladder, but guess what I walked out of that hospital with 22hrs later, A REFERRAL TO SEE A SURGEON ABOUT HAVING GALLBLADDER removed AND on top of that when I had my 6 month follow-up at oncology clinic the PA is see comes in the room(those hospital records where sent to them) and says YEP GINA YOU NEED TO HAVE YOUR GALLBLADDER REMOVED!!(can you tell it pisses me off just a little) no one at any time has given me any diagnosis that warrants me having it removed..grrrrrrr. Furthermore, I had a visit with a new GI doctor this past Wednesday 9/28 and she doesn’t think it is my gallbladder AT ALL!! In fact she came back with some excellent suggestions to get to the bottom of this horrible pain for me and I am cautiously optimistic that she can help get it figured out. Because tbh Megan, I am just tired, mentally, emotionally, and physically of constant tests, labs, scans, poking and prodding, millions of questions which are they really even listening to my responses?!?? Sorry I guess I am just a tad bit tainted with disgust for the entire medical system.
Thank you for your blog Megan and I hope you don’t mind that I shared a little bit of my story. Believe it or not I tried to make it short..LOL anyway have a good weekend and keep on writing.
Megan Smith · October 5, 2022 at 12:37 pm
Hi Gina. thanks for sharing your story. Sorry what you went through was so horrific. I hope women read this and take something away from it. The medical establishment hasn’t treated me very well either, as I’ve written about, and I’m sure we’re not the only ones. It’s very easy to get sucked down into the abyss, I tell my friends. And it’s doing nothing but getting worse. We are our own best advocates! Stay strong and hang in there. I’m sure you are exhausted, as anyone would be after what you’ve been through:)) Megan