The risks associated with ionising radiation in medical imaging Assignment

The risks associated with ionising radiation in medical imaging practice, and the precautions required to protect aginst them - Assignment Example Due to the in effective training and inadequate awareness given to the staff as well as the patients they are exposed to more unnecessary radiation (Koenig et al 2001). Ionizing radiation is used in applications such as medical imaging in the hospitals and to perform diagnostic imaging. In the medical imaging, the most common forms of the ionizing radiations are the gamma rays and the x-rays. These medical imaging practices are important in the medical field because of the determination of the diseases and different injuries in the human body. However, aside from these benefits and life saving tool, these ionizing radiations has certain limits and conditions to be applied on the patients and people. The reason for this is due to the fact that high doses of these ionizing radiations are responsible for the formation of cancers. The ionizing radiation in the medical imaging is found to be one of the most important discoveries of the medical science. Even with the use of the new technol ogy, the equipments are highly capable of posing high radiation doses if the treatment procedure is not well maintained and followed (ICRP 2000). Whereas there is a strong debate going that the usage of these ionizing radiations may cause genetic mutations and cancers. As it is well known that there is no such dose below which there is no risk of any harm to the exposed one or a zero risk (ICRP 1990). So it is important to avoid the exposure to these ionizing radiations but how can this be possible. Of course someone that needs medical attention and for different diagnosis, one has to go through these treatments, but on the first hand the primary cure is to improve the life styles and the determinants that may cause the health damage to be improved. Below is the typical effective dose from x-ray radiation. Exam Effective Dose mSv (mrem)1 Chest (LAT) 0.04 (4) Chest (AP) 0.02 (2) Skull (AP) 0.03 (3) Skull (Lat) 0.01 (1) Pelvis (AP) 0.7 (70) Thoracic Spine (AP) 0.4 (40) Lumbar Spine (A P) 0.7 (70) Exam Effective Dose mSv (mrem)2 Mammogram (four views) 0.7 (70) Dental (lateral) 0.02 (2) Dental (panoramic) 0.09 (9) DEXA (whole body) 0.0004 (0.04) Hip 0.8 (80) Hand or Foot 0.005 (0.5) Abdomen 1.2 (120) By improving our health status and also improving our physical mental and social states, we can avoid these threats even at the first place to be exposed by such ionizing radiations even for the diagnosis. However the main concern regarding the ionizing radiation is the induced cancer among the young children from the CT scans. As the young children are more susceptible to get the cancer as compared to the elders, so the more controlled experiments and discoveries are to be made in order to avoid this risk of more cancer due to these ionizing radiations. But another debate that why the need for these medical imaging are increasing day by day even with the more sophisticated technology and new era of research, does that means that science failed to improve the health st atus of the world’s population even with the advancement. The answer could be controversial as the health is comprehensive phenomena and does not depend on one facto but many. So there is a need to improve the