Scary News: CT Scans Could Cause DNA Damage

CT scans expose patients to at least 150 times the amount of radiation from a single chest X-ray, however, they allow doctors to get more detailed images of the body. (Photo: Getty Images)

CT scans — also known as CAT Scans — are cross-sectional X-rays commonly used to diagnose symptoms ranging from chest pains to digestive problems to bone issues. If you haven’t had one in the past, you probably will at some point.

But new research published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology has discovered a potentially scary side effect of CT scans: DNA damage.

For their study, scientists at Stanford examined the cells of 67 patients who underwent a wide range of CT (or “computerized tomography”) scans. Researchers detected cellular damage from the scan in patients who received all but the lowest dose of radiation.

Scientists noted in the study that DNA damage was not detected in patients who were exposed to 7.5 mSV (a measure of radiation dosage) or less. That’s equivalent to the radiation you’re exposed to during one heart CT scan or 50 chest X-rays. But for those who experienced higher doses — such as the radiation levels by full body and full chest scans — there was noticeable cell damage.

Study co-author Joseph Wu, MD, PhD, director of the Stanford Cardiovascular Institue, tells Yahoo Health that he and his team suspected some cellular damage might be at play with CT scans, “we just didn’t know to what extent and at what does going into the study.”

CT scans expose patients to at least 150 times the amount of radiation from a single chest X-ray, the study noted. However, CT scans allow doctors to get more detailed images of parts of the body, which is why they’re commonly ordered.

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While this study in particular didn’t look at what the effects of that cellular damage might be, the link between CT scans and cancer (which can be caused by cell damage) is nothing new.

According to the National Cancer Institute, the risk of someone developing a fatal cancer from a standard CT scan is about one in 2,000. However, the organization notes, not having a CT scan can be more risky than having it, especially if it’s being used to diagnose a serious condition.

The radiation from CT scans seem to impact women more than men: Research published in the Archives of Internal Medicine found that an estimated one in 270 women who underwent a CT chest scan at age 40 will develop cancer (compared to one in 600 men), and one in 8,100 women who had a routine head CT scan at the same age will also develop cancer (compared to one in 11,080 men). For patients who were 20 years old, the risks were doubled; for those who were 60 years old, the risks were 50 percent lower.

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CT scans also have an effect on children. A 2013 study of more than 680,000 people that was published in the journal BMJ found that people who received a CT scan before the age of 19 had a 24 percent greater risk of developing cancer, and the risk went up 16 percent for each additional scan.

(Wu is quick to note that his study doesn’t show that CT scans cause cancer.)

Before you panic, know this: Interventional radiologist Mark Baerlocher, MD, who has written several medical papers on the effects of radiation exposure on patients, says that our bodies are typically able to bounce back from cellular damage.

“We have recovery mechanisms and enzymes that repair this,” he tells Yahoo Health. “The theory is that the greater amount of radiation that we are exposed to, the increased likelihood that our repair mechanisms will ‘miss’ a repair, which in turn could lead to cancer.”

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While the findings are a little frightening, study co-author Dominik Fleischmann, MD, a professor of radiology at the Stanford School of Medicine, says you shouldn’t avoid getting a CT scan if you need it, since the benefits outweigh the potential risks.

“The risk of a CT scan is still very much unknown. We can’t put a number on it; We just know it’s very low,” he tells Yahoo Health. “That may be one reason why people are more concerned about a radiation risk than the risk of dying in a car accident (which is definitely much higher) — because it is so vague, without a number that can be easily and reliably calculated.”

While Wu agrees that the benefits outweigh the risks, he says he hopes the findings will help doctors better understand the importance of using as low a radiation dose as possible when ordering a scan.

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