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X-ray over exposure

Sent to Health Experts September 28 01:16 PM

Hello,
          Yesterday I was given and intensive battery of x-rays. By intensive I mean somewhere in the neighborhood of 36-40 x-rays of various parts of my arms, neck and abdomin. over the course of about an hour and a half. Several of the x-rays were redone multiple times because they didn't come through clearly, on these I seems to get longer and longer exposeuses in an attempt to clarify the picture. Eventualy I had to be moved to a different room to get 2 final xrays that they couldn't seem to get to come out in the first room. Afterward I became incrdibly sick, stomach pain and nausea, vomiting, disorintation and fever. Upon returning the hospital they said I had a virus, I am wondering however if the x-rays could have been responsible?

 

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September 28 1:30 PM (13 minutes and 33 seconds later)
         
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That is a lot of X-rays!

But you should feel reassured, because even with that number of X-rays, you are probably not at any increased risk of future disease, or side-effects afterwards. Your symptoms were not due to the X-rays, and could have been caused by a virus.

The amount of radiation in most X-rays is very minimal, and many studies have actually shown increased life-expectancy in people who have, because of their work (shipyard workers, for instance, who can be exposed to higher-than-normal doses of radiation) or other factors (some of the Japanese atom bomb survivors also lived longer than expected, as well - of course, those direcly in the blast radius and those that received far too much radiation did suffer terribly) have been exposed to more radiation than normal.

Every day, you are exposed to radiation - from your environment (if you fly often, you also receive more background radiation, since you are up higher in the atmosphere) and from your own body (yes, we are radioactive). The amount of radiation in X-rays, even multiple X-rays like you describe, is not significantly more than all of this background radiation.

So you don't have any need to be concerned about the X-rays. Hospitals are, however, notorious breeding grounds for all sorts of communicable disease, and you could have indeed picked up a virus there.

Just a tip - when you go to the doctor/hospital, always wash your hands during and afterwards, and don't touch your eyes/mouth/nose while you're there. This will help reduce the possibility that you will end up coming down with some sort of hospital-borne illness.

But X-rays are very, very safe.

I hope this helps. Please let me know if you have any further questions - I'm more than happy to try and help.

Take care - Dr. Fay

Edited by jcfay on September 28 2006 at 1:31 PM



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