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Study co-author Thomas Gerber, a cardiologist at the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Fla., says the advantage of CCTA scans is that they provide doctors with a direct view of the heart arteries, revealing tiny blockages that might be missed during traditional stress tests (which entail monitoring the heart rate, breathing, blood pressure and heart rhythm of a patient running on a treadmill).
Based on this data, the researchers calculated each patient's "effective radiation dose," a value that takes into account the amount of radiation and the vulnerability of body parts exposed to it, such as the lungs and breasts.
"The risk of [these levels of] radiation in terms of causing cancer isn't understood very well," Gerber says, "but we can't completely dismiss the risk."
Hospitals with older scanners might also consider upgrading to some of the newer lower radiation "sequential scanners" that deliver x-rays in pulses rather than a continuous beam, Einstein adds.
"It is important," Gerber says, "for doctors to get a sense [of] what the potential risks are."
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Tags: radiation, scans, cancer, heart, CCTA
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