Is all that scanning putting us at risk?

Last year, when Dr. Aaron Sodickson and his colleagues counted the number of medical scans patients underwent in the emergency room at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, some patients clearly stood out. One 45-year-old woman with a history of kidney stones had 70 CT scans over 22 years. The cumulative radiation exposure from those scans, the researchers estimated, raised her lifetime risk of cancer by about 10 percent. Another patient had 20 chest, 35 head, and seven spine CTs over the two decades, raising her estimated cancer risk by 4 percent…

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