CT scans are becoming routine, partly due to patient expectations and defensive medicine. The exposure to radiation is something that has been underpublicized, so getting the word out is helpful:
A chest CT, for example, exposes a patient to about 8 millisieverts of radiation – 80 to 400 times the radiation exposure from a chest X-ray and, recent studies show, close to the lowest doses received by Japanese survivors of the atomic bombs who were farthest away from the blasts. These survivors, irradiated with 5 to 20 millisieverts, have demonstrated a small but measurable increase in their lifetime risk of dying from cancer.
