What are the Radiation Risks from CT?
As in many aspects of medicine, there are both benefits and risks associated with the use of CT. The main risks are those associated with • abnormal test results, for a benign or incidental finding, leading to unneeded, possibly invasive, follow-up tests that may present additional risks and • the increased possibility of cancer induction from x-ray radiation exposure. The probability for absorbed x rays to induce cancer or heritable mutations leading to genetically associated diseases in offspring is thought to be very small for radiation doses of the magnitude that are associated with CT procedures. Such estimates of cancer and genetically heritable risk from x-ray exposure have a broad range of statistical uncertainty, and there is some scientific controversy regarding the effects from very low doses and dose rates as discussed below. Under some rare circumstances of prolonged, high-dose exposure, x rays can cause other adverse health effects, such as skin erythema (reddening), skin
