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Sign Me Up. Print This Page Click to Print. Staying Healthy. Children's Health. Free Healthbeat Signup Get the latest in health news delivered to your inbox! Sign Up. The X-ray images will often need to be examined by a doctor called a radiologist before you're told the results. They may discuss their findings with you on the same day, or they may send a report to your GP or the doctor who requested the X-ray, who can discuss the results with you a few days later.
People are often concerned about being exposed to radiation during an X-ray. However, the part of your body being examined will only be exposed to a low level of radiation for a fraction of a second. Generally, the amount of radiation you're exposed to during an X-ray is the equivalent to between a few days and a few years of exposure to natural radiation from the environment.
Being exposed to X-rays does carry a risk of causing cancer many years or decades later, but this risk is thought to be very small. For example, an X-ray of your chest, limbs or teeth is equivalent to a few days' worth of background radiation, and has less than a 1 in 1,, chance of causing cancer. For more information, see GOV.
UK: patient dose information. The benefits and risks of having an X-ray will be weighed up before it's recommended.
Talk to your doctor or radiographer about the potential risks beforehand, if you have any concerns. Page last reviewed: 13 July Next review due: 13 July How X-rays work X-rays are a type of radiation that can pass through the body. When X-rays are used X-rays can be used to examine most areas of the body. X-rays are a valuable method of diagnosing or identifying issues as a result of injury or illness. However, these imaging scans expose people to a small dose of ionizing radiation.
While this small amount of exposure is safe once in a while, prolonged subjection to ionizing radiation can cause health problems. For many, this raises questions about the dangers of having multiple X-ray procedures. Below, we will discuss how many X-rays are safe to have in one year. An X-ray is a form of radiant energy that produces ionization radiation. Radiography: This is the most familiar type of X-ray imaging.
It is used to image broken bones, teeth, and the chest. Radiography also uses the smallest amounts of radiation. Fluoroscopy: The radiologist, or radiographer, can watch the X-ray of the patient moving in real-time and take snapshots.
This type of X-ray might be used to watch the activity of the gut after a barium meal. Fluoroscopy uses more X-ray radiation than a standard X-ray, but the amounts are still extremely small. Computed tomography CT : The patient lies on a table and enters a ring-shaped scanner.
A fan-shaped beam of X-rays passes through the patient onto a number of detectors. This procedure uses the highest dose of X-rays because a large number of images are taken in one sitting. X-rays can cause mutations in our DNA and, therefore, might lead to cancer later in life. However, the benefits of X-ray technology far outweigh the potential negative consequences of using them.
It is estimated that 0. Some scientists expect this level to rise in parallel with the increased use of CT scans in medical procedures. At least 62 million CT scans were carried out in America in According to one study, by the age of 75 years, X-rays will increase the risk of cancer by 0.
In other words, the risks are minimal compared to the benefits of medical imaging. Each procedure has a different associated risk that depends on the type of X-ray and the part of the body being imaged. The list below shows some of the more common imaging procedures and compares the radiation dose to the normal background radiation that all people encounter on a daily basis. These radiation figures are for adults. Children are more susceptible to the radioactive effects of X-rays.
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