Can CT Scans Raise Cancer Risk?

Nov. 28, 2007 -- As many as 20 million adults and 1 million children in the U.S. receive unnecessary computed tomography (CT) scans each year, potentially causing thousands of excess cancers in decades to come, researchers say.

Writing in Wednesday's issue of The New England Journal of Medicine, the Columbia University researchers warned that the dramatic rise in CT usage to diagnose medical problems and screen for disease could pose a significant risk to public health.

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