UMC Pledges to ‘Image Gently’ Pediatric CT Patients to Lessen Radiation Exposure
2010
University Medical Center has joined the Alliance for Radiation Safety in Pediatric Imaging in a pledge to “Image Gently” all children requiring CT scans by lowering pediatric radiation doses.
Computed Tomography (CT) scans are a valuable diagnostic tool that use X-rays generated from a source that is rotated around the patient to create three-dimensional pictures of the body, explained UMC pediatric radiologist Dorothy Gilbertson, MD, assistant professor in the University of Arizona Department of Radiology.
CT scans are painless, relatively quick and provide critical information to physicians, but deliver doses of radiation as much as 200 times greater than a standard chest X-ray, she said. Recent studies have raised concern that such large doses of radiation, plus the increasing use of these diagnostic procedures, may pose a cancer risk.
“The truth is we don’t know for sure what the long-term or cumulative effects of all this scanning may be on our health 10 or 15 years from now, so it’s important to reduce medical radiation exposure wherever we can, especially in children,” Dr. Gilbertson said.
According to the Alliance for Radiation Safety in Pediatric Imaging, of which UMC is now a member, approximately 7 million CT studies are performed in children every year in the United States, and the number is increasing approximately 10 percent per year. CT is used widely among all ages of children, with 33 percent performed in children under 10 years of age. CT is the largest contributor to medical radiation dose in the United States.
UMC has four CT scanners and a fifth CT scanner at it satellite imaging center, University Medical Imaging, 4291 N. Campbell Ave. UMC performs approximately 120 CT scans a day, most of them on patients in the Trauma Center and Emergency Department.
CT scans also are performed on children to monitor or diagnose tumors or congenital abnormalities, but UMC no longer uses CTs to routinely diagnose cases of suspected appendicitis in children. “For pediatric patients with suspected appendicitis, it’s become the standard of care to first use ultrasound, not CT,” Dr. Gilbertson said. “There’s just no compelling need for that extra radiation in children. CT may become necessary if the ultrasound is equivocal, but often diagnosis can be made with ultrasound.”
Even before taking the alliance’s “Image Gently” pledge, Dr. Gilbertson, UMC chief CT technologist Nicky Bartoletti and UA medical physicist Daniel Silvain, MS, DABR, have been working to reduce the radiation dose for pediatric patients at UMC while maintaining high-quality diagnostic CT images that are within national guidelines set by the American College of Radiology. In 2008, UMC earned accreditation from the American College of Radiology for CT, making it one of the few Arizona hospitals to undergo the rigorous, voluntary accreditation process.
UMC also has instituted additional radiation protection mechanisms, such as breast shielding for all female pediatric and adult patients undergoing scans. UMC radiologists encourage the use of alternative imaging techniques such as ultrasound and MRI, which do not use radiation, rather than CT, whenever possible.
As part of the Image Gently campaign, parents are encouraged to educate themselves about medical radiation and to keep track of scans their children may undergo.
For more information about medical radiation safety for children, please visit www.imagegently.org.
University Medical Center has joined the Alliance for Radiation Safety in Pediatric Imaging in a pledge to “Image Gently” all children requiring CT scans by lowering pediatric radiation doses.