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> I had a CT scan of a fracture taken when I was a child, and doctors coincidentally discovered a tumour. > My mum discovered she had breast cancer through a r
by arcticbull 3y ago
> I had a CT scan of a fracture taken when I was a child, and doctors coincidentally discovered a tumour.
> My mum discovered she had breast cancer through a routine mammogram.
These two are not the same thing. We do mammograms, and only in women over a certain age, because they're a high risk population.
CT scans, especially chest CT scans, expose you to huge amounts of radiation. The odds that you randomly stumble on a super low-incidence tumor is dwarfed by the fact you're exposing people - especially children in your case - to large doses of ionizing radiation.
A chest CT scan smacks you with 7 mSv which is about the same as spending an hour at Chernobyl, or 7X the EPA annual dose limit for radiation exposure. [1]
Lest we not forget Bayes theorem. We only do tests on people who are likely to have the condition otherwise the risks associated with a false positive outweigh the benefits of early detection.
[1] https://xkcd.com/radiation/ https://xkcd.com/radiation/
- strken 3y agoI'm not suggesting that, at all. I just don't like the framing that any new screening process must be part of a "quest to live forever" instead of a quest to e.g. live long enough to go to your kid's wedding.
- arcticbull 3y agoI think the point is more that rich tech folks (like many people) think doing more testing must be good even if there's no scientific evidence to support that conclusion - the difference is rich tech folks can afford it anyways, and they're going to be very loud about it.
- MikusR 3y agoJust don't eat bananas for a month to offset it.
- lm28469 3y agoPeople should stop with these bananas stories every time we talk about radiations > while average Computer Tomography (CT) scan would equal to 105 BED or one hundred thousand eaten bananas https://etn.redmud.org/banana-equivalent-dose/#:~:text=The%20medical%20exposure%20to%20radiation,one%20hundred%20thousand%20eaten%20bananas https://etn.redmud.org/banana-equivalent-dose/#:~:text=The%2....
- flir 3y agostrken gave examples of early detection being advantegeous. The article's about MRIs. So what's the radiation risk with MRIs? If there's no radiation risk, what's the problem? What nobody has suggested is that "rich tech folks" are having lots of x-rays in a quest for early detection. (This is poorly phrased on my part, btw - not trying to attack you, trying to show a chain of logical thought). > We do mammograms, and only in women over a certain age, because they're a high risk population. raises hand I'm a cis male who had to go for a mammogram (got some weird looks in the waiting room). It's not just for cancer screening high risk women.
- miiiiiike 3y agoNormal yearly background radiation is 4 mSv. US radiation workers have a yearly limit of 50 mSv. Never get more radiation exposure that you need to but also the EPA numbers are in addition to normal, basically unpreventable, exposure. 7 mSv is not 7x the total.