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Monday, April 4, 2011

QD: News Every Day--Airport scanners are 'planely' safe

In preparation of Internal Medicine 2011 in San Diego this week, the unavoidable choice to make isn't which sessions to attend, but even before arriving: Will you pass through the airport's security scanners, or opt for the pat down?

Physicians themselves are split on the issue, with some physicians opting out of repeat scanning in favor of the pat down search.

"I do whatever I can to avoid the scanner," one physician told CNN. Other physicians interviewed were split on the issue one way or another. But as a frequent flier, this doctor was concerned about the cumulative effect. "This is a total body scan--not a dental or chest X-ray. Total body radiation is not something I find very comforting based on my medical knowledge."

The Archives of Internal Medicine looks at the safety of the scanners, which haven't been independently examined outside of the government's own analysis of their safety. They apply radiation, specifically for the backscatter scanners, the more common ones used in the United States, which use ionizing radiation. Low doses cause biological damage, but cells repair it quickly. Backscatter X-ray scans use exceedingly low doses, the report said, "... so low that it is really not known whether there is any potential for causing harm."

But, 750 million air passengers a year, even a small risk per person could potentially become a significant number of cancers.

Ionizing radiation occurs naturally, and is widely used in industry and medicine, the article points out. The National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements reports that common sources of exposure are medical procedures and ubiquitous background radiation from the sun and cosmic rays, and from radon released from the earth. Backscatter X-ray scanners expose people to the equivalent of 3 to 9 minutes of what they'd get anyway from daily living.

Those who fly are exposed to more radiation anyway, but backscatter X-ray machines still equal only the radiation exposure that occurs for 1 to 3 minutes of flight time, or an increase of less than 1% for a cross-country flight.

The article points out that it takes 50 airport scans to equal the exposure of a single dental radiograph, 1,000 to equal a chest radiograph, 4,000 to equal the exposure of a mammogram, and 200,000 to equal an abdominal and pelvic CT scan.

"Based on what is known about the scanners, passengers should not fear going through the scans for health reasons, as the risks are truly trivial," the authors concluded. "If individuals feel vulnerable and are worried about the radiation emitted by the scans, they might reconsider flying altogether since most of the small, but real, radiation risk they will receive will come from the flight and not from the exceedingly small exposures from the scans."

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posted by Ryan DuBosar at 12:27 PM  

1 Comments:

Blogger SOUNG-AE said...

reportedly UCSF suggested worrying about maintenance of airport scanners--if the machines fail to quickly refocus the exposure down the body, many many would be affected quickly-----the radiation is concentrated to not penetrate deeply--an advantage to deep organs, a potential disadvantage to superficial organs--e.g.skin, breast tissue

April 8, 2011 2:04 AM  

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Members of the American College of Physicians contribute posts from their own sites to ACP Internist and ACP Hospitalist. Contributors include:

Albert Fuchs, MD
Albert Fuchs, MD, FACP, graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles School of Medicine, where he also did his internal medicine training. Certified by the American Board of Internal Medicine, Dr. Fuchs spent three years as a full-time faculty member at UCLA School of Medicine before opening his private practice in Beverly Hills in 2000.

Zackary Berger
Zackary Berger, MD, ACP Member, is a primary care doctor and general internist in the Division of General Internal Medicine at Johns Hopkins. His research interests include doctor-patient communication, bioethics, and systematic reviews.

CasesBlog
Ves Dimov, MD, ACP Member, is an allergist/immunologist and Assistant Professor of Medicine and Pediatrics at the University of Chicago, where he evaluates and treats both pediatric and adult patients.

David Katz, MD
David L. Katz, MD, MPH, FACP, is an internationally renowned authority on nutrition, weight management, and the prevention of chronic disease, and an internationally recognized leader in integrative medicine and patient-centered care.

db's Medical Rants
Robert M. Centor, MD, FACP, contributes short essays contemplating medicine and the health care system.

DrDialogue
Juliet K. Mavromatis, MD, FACP, provides a conversation about health topics for patients and health professionals.

Dr. Mintz' Blog
Matthew Mintz, MD, FACP, has practiced internal medicine for more than a decade and is an Associate Professor of Medicine at an academic medical center on the East Coast. His time is split between teaching medical students and residents, and caring for patients.

Everything Health
Toni Brayer, MD, FACP, blogs about the rapid changes in science, medicine, health and healing in the 21st century.

FutureDocs
Vineet Arora, MD, FACP, is Associate Program Director for the Internal Medicine Residency and Assistant Dean of Scholarship & Discovery at the Pritzker School of Medicine for the University of Chicago. Her education and research focus is on resident duty hours, patient handoffs, medical professionalism, and quality of hospital care. She is also an academic hospitalist.

Glass Hospital
John H. Schumann, MD, FACP, provides transparency on the workings of medical practice and the complexities of hospital care, illuminates the emotional and cognitive aspects of caregiving and decision-making from the perspective of an active primary care physician, and offers behind-the-scenes portraits of hospital sanctums and the people who inhabit them.

Gut Check
Ryan Madanick, MD, ACP Member, is a gastroenterologist at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine, and the Program Director for the GI & Hepatology Fellowship Program. He specializes in diseases of the esophagus, with a strong interest in the diagnosis and treatment of patients who have difficult-to-manage esophageal problems such as refractory GERD, heartburn, and chest pain.

I'm dok
ACP Member Mike Aref, MD, PhD, ACP Member, is an academic hospitalist with an interest in basic and clinical science and education, with interests in noninvasive monitoring and diagnostic testing using novel bedside imaging modalities, diagnostic reasoning, medical informatics, new medical education modalities, pre-code/code management, palliative care, patient-physician communication, quality improvement, and quantitative biomedical imaging.

Informatics Professor
William Hersh, MD, FACP, Professor and Chair, Department of Medical Informatics & Clinical Epidemiology, Oregon Health & Science University, posts his thoughts on various topics related to biomedical and health informatics.

Just Oncology
Richard Just, MD, ACP Member, has 36 years in clinical practice of hematology and medical oncology. His blog is a joint publication with Gregg Masters, MPH.

KevinMD
Kevin Pho, MD, ACP Member, offers one of the Web's definitive sites for influential health commentary.

MD Whistleblower
Michael Kirsch, MD, FACP, addresses the joys and challenges of medical practice, including controversies in the doctor-patient relationship, medical ethics and measuring medical quality. When he's not writing, he's performing colonoscopies.

Medical Lessons
Elaine Schattner, MD, ACP Member, shares her ideas on education, ethics in medicine, health care news and culture. Her views on medicine are informed by her past experiences in caring for patients, as a researcher in cancer immunology, and as a patient who's had breast cancer.

More Musings
Rob Lamberts, MD, ACP Member, a med-peds and general practice internist, returns with "volume 2" of his personal musings about medicine, life, armadillos and Sasquatch at More Musings (of a Distractible Kind).

Musing of an Internist
Justin Penn, MD, ACP Associate Member, attended medical school at the University of Washington School of Medicine and trained in internal medicine at the University of Rochester, where he is serving as Chief Resident.

Prescriptions
David M. Sack, MD, FACP, practices general gastroenterology at a small community hospital in Connecticut. His blog is a series of musings on medicine, medical care, the health care system and medical ethics, in no particular order.

Reflections of a Grady Doctor
Kimberly Manning, MD, FACP, reflects on the personal side of being a doctor in a community hospital in Atlanta.

Technology in (Medical) Education
Neil Mehta, MBBS, MS, FACP, is interested in use of technology in education, social media and networking, practice management and evidence-based medicine tools, personal information and knowledge management.

White Coat Underground
Peter A. Lipson, MD, ACP Member, is a practicing internist and teaching physician in Southeast Michigan. The blog, which has been around in various forms since 2007, offers musings on the intersection of science, medicine, and culture.

Other blogs of note:

American Journal of Medicine
Also known as the Green Journal, the American Journal of Medicine publishes original clinical articles of interest to physicians in internal medicine and its subspecialities, both in academia and community-based practice.

Clinical Correlations
A collaborative medical blog started by Neil Shapiro, MD, ACP Member, associate program director at New York University Medical Center's internal medicine residency program. Faculty, residents and students contribute case studies, mystery quizzes, news, commentary and more.

Interact MD
Michael Benjamin, MD, ACP member, doesn't accept industry money so he can create an independent, clinician-reviewed space on the Internet for physicians to report and comment on the medical news of the day.

PLoS Blog
The Public Library of Science's open access materials include a blog.

White Coat Rants
One of the most popular anonymous blogs written by an emergency room physician.

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