Presently, the UK and the United States of American have been leading globally regarding the number of CT scans being used in the two countries. Due to this, there has been an ethical health concern regarding the consequences resulting from radiology exposure particularly due to cancer induction. This concern followed a higher number of fold cases of cancer menace increasing among the patient who has been exposed to these rays. The scenario has been very worse in the United States of America since, over the two years, the use of CT caput has been almost five times that used in the United Kingdom. The two countries use a larger portion of collective doses from the diagnostic radiology which results into higher dose radiological methods like the CT, barium enemas and the interventional radiology. About this radiology, it has been established medically that the relevant organs of the body are directly exposed to excess epidemiological risks of cancer.
However, medics should needlessly extrapolate these risks from higher doses since high dose radiology procedures might be exposing a patient to minimal risks. These concerns come in when CT is unethically used by quack medics who are not able to administer it properly as per the guidelines. In fact, in the case of a CT scan being used without proper modality, it results in widespread cancer risk. Such scenarios have been estimated in the United States of American to add up to almost 35%. An example of these faulty uses of CT scans is being found in a screening of asymptomatic patients. Due to this scenario, a risk balance for any general CT scan technique can be clearly observed (Smith et al. 2009).
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Recent studies have established a concern due to prolonged use of diagnostic X-rays particularly in the induction of cancer. The use of CT has gone higher as mentioned above over the past centuries in the UK and United States of America. It can be estimated that almost 3 million CT scans are used every year in UK and 60 million in the United States of America annually as well. This means that the average X-ray administration has gone high in the United States of America. Again the majority of the patients in the United States of America who use effective doses are seriously facing the risk of acquiring cancer due to these X-rays exposures. These increasing cases of CT scan procedures in diagnosis show that CT scan might be a quick, accurate and secure form of diagnosis tool in many medical centers. The primary concern has been in CT scan since the procedure exposes body organ to radiation doses that are almost 100 times those doses prove to the body by conventional radiological procedures like X-rays. Nevertheless, a medical report released in the year 2012 over the CT radiology cancer risk showed that the absorbed CT doses by body organs might exceed the levels known of cancer risks by far (Brenner et al. 2001).
Therefore, the radiation exposure should always be regulated to reasonable levels. The medical fraternity now claims that there are opportunities for reducing CT field cumulative doses by reducing the number of CT scans administration and also minimizing the number of doses per scan. These suggestions are likely to contribute significantly to the reduction of radiology cancer risks. The doctors are working tirelessly to ensure reduction of CT scan practices without compromising the patient care. Even with these several concerns, there have not been severe cases of large-scale epidemiological cancer risks reported due to CT usage. Since the outcomes of these studies might be lacking in future, it is imperative to assess the cancer risks linked to radiation every time a CT scan has been practiced. It can be done by calculating the organ doses quantity that have been incorporated. Another approach is by applying specific cancer incidence or mortality information that was earlier extracted from the survivors (Hall and Brenner 2014).
It has been established that regular CT scans that incorporate two or three scans within a range can show a considerable evidence of increasing cases of cancer risks. This indicates that resulting cancer risks that are associated with CT can directly be established through epidemiological information. It can be done without necessarily extrapolating the risks of cancer to lower doses. Further studies show estimated cases of cancer mortality risks resulting from one generic CT scan of the abdomen or head. This can be proven by adding up all the estimated organ-specific cancer risks. These estimates can be examined by the use of organ doses extracted from the medium CT scan machine settings. There are still dilemmas in quantifying the radiology risks that are associated with CT scan. The Monte Carlo simulations show the various uncertainties where the lower and the upper confidence limits of radiation risks are estimated (Brenner et al. 2001).
The individual risks linked to radiology might be restricted, but the concerns on the CT risks are about the present widespread use of this medical procedure. This has to be taken seriously since an individual risk due to large population might lead to general public health issues in the future. A typical example is a study conducted between the years 1191 and 1996 to ascertain the radiology usage; it was estimated that 0.6% of the cancer risks in the United Kingdom were ultimately linked to X-rays used in diagnosis. This can be compared to 0.9% and 3% estimates of the United States of America and Japan respectively. The studies show that CT scan usage grew significantly in the United Kingdom and United States of America between the years of 1991 and 1996 (Smith et al. 2009).
Lung cancer has been the most predominant type of cancer and people has only been associating it with smoking though it can also be related to radiology risks. Due to these risks, there is a significant need of using low-dose CT scans for the daily screening practices. It should be the next approach after medical practitioner’s failure to conduct testing with conventional chest X-ray which is a low dose lung CT and can detect pulmonary problems to a larger extent. The use of virtual colonoscopy which is geometry for lung CT is a little bit safer as compared to the normal CT scan procedures. Indeed there is a significant need for ethical issues with radiology to be given a lot of consideration to prevent widespread of cancer menace. Some people fail to consider ethics in the field of healthcare and nursing, and they wrongfully administer radiology to patient putting them at a higher risk of contracting this deadly disease. Therefore it is crucial only to restrict the expertise to handle these machines since they are experienced and skilled.
References
Brenner, D. J., Elliston, C. D., Hall, E. J., & Berdon, W. E. (2001). Estimated risks of radiation-induced fatal cancer from pediatric CT. American journal of roentgenology, 176(2), 289-296.
Hall, E. J., & Brenner, D. J. (2014). Cancer risks from diagnostic radiology. The British journal of radiology.
Smith-Bindman, R., Lipson, J., Marcus, R., Kim, K. P., Mahesh, M., Gould, R. ... & Miglioretti, D. L. (2009). Radiation dose associated with common computed tomography examinations and the associated lifetime attributable risk of cancer. Archives of internal medicine, 169(22), 2078-2086.
