x-rays and covering breasts/ovaries

[LindaRacine]

Linda,

My daughter gets supine in-brace x-rays because she is prescribed the night-time bending braces which is apparently the way that these bending braces are x-rayed...i.e. the way it will be when they are sleeping.

Doh, of course!

Thanks.

--Linda

[Beckymk]

I do know for us that if there is metal in the bra, they will ask that it be removed. Although DD can leave her top on I guess. I'm never in there, except once.

DD has a sports bra that she uses specifically for when we go for check-ups -- it's a t-back with no metal in it at all & she's allowed to leave it on.

I know the x-rays she took before surgery she was not covered but those were some funky x-rays anyway. They were bending x-rays of some sort. They had me come in & help since it takes 3 people to do the x-ray & they only had 2 available. Carolyn had her hands above her head, the technician pushed her in the side as far as she would go and I was holding her feet still.

There were a couple other contourted ones they took too. It was very weird.

[S4Sarah]

I was disapointed about that too, they covered me once! I have had about 30 X-rays and I have only been covered for 2 of them! I'm not exactly sure why they don't do it all the time? But yes I'm a bit scared, I was exposed to that much radiation and I'm sure others were too!

[banta]

How in the heck does a hospital gown keep the x-ray from being clear? Do they put lead in them??? I don't think so! I'd definitely raise H***

[S4Sarah]

We have had similar experiences. Our doctor also says it is difficult to know where the ovaries are (I believe her on this as she is trying to cooperate with us on limiting x-ray exposure). And at our last x-ray, the tech faced her toward the machine and told me it didn't matter which way she stood. I insisted she be faced away. He still resisted and I had to remind him that he had just told me it didn't matter so please do it my way (and according to the doctor's order).

It's very frustrating and is always the most stressful part of her appointments for me.

Yeah they faced me away a couple of times, I'm not really sure if it makes a difference (The rays penetrate through your body) but it did make me feel more comfortable. There is radiation free imaging in selective places.For more info check out http://www.scoliosissystems.com/rast...reography.html

[Ballet Mom]

In case anyone is wondering why the doctors don't seem very concerned about our kids' x-ray exposure, this is probably why. Looks like our kids have it fairly good, relatively.

Radiation Risk

The number of CT tests in the U.S. surged to an estimated 62 million a year in 2006 from about 3 million a year in 1980, according to a 2007 review in the New England Journal of Medicine. About 800,000 of the procedures in 2006 were heart scans, according to a 2008 study in Health Physics.

High cumulative doses of medical radiation may raise the risk of cancer, though researchers aren’t certain how much radiation may cause malignancy, said Gilbert Raff, the lead author of today’s study. Research in the Feb. 4 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association estimated radiation from a cardiac CT scan equals 600 chest x-rays.
Raff said previous studies estimated a 60-year-old man with one coronary CT scan would face a 1-in-1,241 chance of developing a tumor from the exposure. Repeated scans may magnify such risk, he said.

At the outset of the study, scans delivered a dose of radiation equal to what a person would get from seven years of background radiation from the sun and from elements in the earth including radon, Raff said.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?p...d=a3dDGkJJJ3lU

[mamamax]

I just got off of the phone with the Chief of Pediatric Radiology at a world renowned children's hospital where my daughter had x-rays on Monday.

She first tried to convince me that ovaries "COULD possibly lay at the bottom of the pelvis" where the gonadal shield was placed, which then means all of my daughter's previous x-rays had a gonadal shield that was too high. She could only explain this by telling me that "no one really knows where the ovaries are."

After discussing my daughter's breast exposure, she told me that since her back was facing the radiation machine, her breasts would not be absorbing much radiation. I told her that my daughter was facing toward the x-ray machine, not away, which is why I was demanding breast shields to begin with. She said her x-rays had indeed been done INcorrectly-and that yes, her breasts were fully exposed during the x-ray.

She told me that my daughter should have either been facing away from the machine, or had her breasts covered. Which means, since this same situation happened during her last x-rays, they made the same error twice. I would never have allowed this to happen if they did not repeatedly tell me, "due to the magnitude of her curve, if we shield her breasts, it might result in the need to re-take the image" (my error for believing them).

In other words, a top children's hospital makes errors in something so simple as taking an x-ray.

When my daughter was first x-rayed years ago, half of the time I had to remind the technicians to give her shields.

I am relaying this information not merely to vent, but to let all parents know they have to demand the best protection for their children during x-rays, and all other issues for that matter.

These kind of errors are UNACCEPTABLE, even more so for children who will go through their growing years receiving multiple series of x-rays.

Brooke

Hi Brooke - wow, sorry you had to go through this. Just wanted to say that every hospital has an administrator and a risk management department - may be good to contact them both about this situation also. Hopefully - this will not happen again. Glad you shared with us.