Radiation: Child Size is Safer

Courtesy of The Children’s Medical Center of Dayton

Nine-year-old Emily Ware walks the halls of Dayton Children’s often. With I.D. badge in hand, this junior nurse helps out in the hematology/oncology clinic—where she's also a patient. She's fighting cancer for the third time. The computed tomography (CT) room is also a familiar place to Emily. "It helps them know how I'm doing inside my body,” Emily says.

Elizabeth Ey, MD at Dayton Children's says she hopes to answer some questions with a CT scan:  "How much tumor does Emily have and where is it? Does she need additional therapy, chemotherapy, or radiation to treat the cancer and make her cancer free?”

But this information comes at a price—radiation exposure.

There is a lot of concern about what exposure can do to adults and especially children, who often receive the same dose of radiation as people three times their size. "A child’s actively growing tissue is much more sensitive to radiation compared to an adult, and children do not need as much radiation to penetrate their body parts," says Dr Ey. According to the Food and Drug Administration, some machines are giving patients four times the amount of radiation first thought necessary. Dayton Children's always gives the minimum radiation dose based on a patient’s height and weight, while still achieving a scan usable for diagnostic purposes.

Even so, Dr. Ey says we need to make sure kids only get CT scans when they are absolutely necessary. Dr. Ey adds, “Although no harmful effects from CT scans have been proven, the radiation dose can be significant."

So, as parents, what do you do? Dr. Ey suggests:

• Ask a lot of questions about any scan your child may need.
• Make sure you understand the problem that is being diagnosed.
• Ask if there are alternatives to a CT scan.
• Make sure the facility is certified by the American College of Radiology.
• Be sure your child is getting a pediatric low dose of radiation.