Ever thought that undergoing an imaging test after a heart attack may expose you to one-third of the maximum radiation dose allowed for a nuclear plant worker in a particular year? According to Dr. Prashanth Kaul, an author for a team of researchers at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, the tests carried out on a heart attack patient emit radioactive elements 725 times as that in a chest X-ray.

Radioactive substances help the doctor in having an inside look at the heart to help identify any artery blockage and also to determine the blood flow. 64000 heart patients from 49 different hospitals in the United States have been observed for more than three years. These patients undergo various medical tests like chest X-rays, cardiac catheterizations and CT scans that expose them to an average 14.5 millisieverts of radiation per visit. This much radiation is about 5 times of what an average person is exposed to annually. It is something to worry about when we notice that the nuclear plant workers are limited to 50 millisieverts per year for safety reasons.

The biological effects of radiation at this level are still unclear. Though these imaging tests are mandatory at most times, the researchers suggest that the doctors should avoid unnecessary tests. Repeated exposures to these radiations may increase the risks of cancer.

In an alarming report, the medical tests (involving radioactive exposure) suggested for heart disease have gone up by 700 percent between 1980 and 2006. Approximately 4 million Americans are exposed to hazardously high levels of radiation due to tests like the CT scan thus increasing the risks of cancer at some point in their life.

An alternative for these high radiation tests can be MRI or Ultrasound. The Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) uses magnetic fields instead of ionizing radiation whereas the Ultrasound tests use sound waves to generate images. Moreover, these tests work well at determining the possible risk factors even before a heart attack occurs.

Sources:

http://www.naturalnews.com/027741_CT_scans_medical_imaging.html