Study finds link between multiple CT scans in childhood and cancer later in life
Posted June 7, 2012 11:38 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Children who undergo multiple CT scans on their head may be at greater risk for developing brain cancer or leukemia later in life, according to a major study.
The report found children with two or three scans can be at triple the risk of developing brain cancer, while those who undergo between five and ten scans could be at triple the risk for developing leukemia.
While the overall risks are still relatively small because of the cancers’ rarity, the findings support the assertion that multiple CT scans are associated with a small increased risk for cancer.
The study, published in medical journal The Lancet, followed nearly 180,000 young people from the United Kingdom who had undergone at least one CT scan as a child.
The researchers found that, roughly, the greater the number of CT scans in childhood the greater the risk for cancer in the future.
The most common reasons children have CT scans of the head is to identify concussions and other head injuries, according to the study author.
The authors also made it clear that the clinical benefits of CT scans far outweigh the small overall risk for an increased chance of developing cancer later in life.
