4 ms·
The study found at a general level that people with meningioma were more than twice as likely as people without the brain tumor to have had a bitewing X-ray som
by irons 14y ago
The study found at a general level that people with meningioma were more than twice as likely as people without the brain tumor to have had a bitewing X-ray sometime in their life.
Running a story like this using relative percentages, but no absolute values, is absurd and contemptible.
I'm not finding any absolute values for meningioma rates in any other stories about this particular study, but old pal wikipedia says:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meningioma http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meningioma
Many individuals have meningiomas but remain asymptomatic (no symptoms) for their entire life, so the meningiomas are not discovered until after an autopsy. 1-2% of all autopsies reveal meningiomas which were unknown to the individuals during their lifetime, since there were never any symptoms. In the 1970s, tumors causing symptoms were discovered in 2 out of 100,000 people, while tumors discovered without causing symptoms occurred in 5.7 out of 100,000, for a total incidence of 7.7/100,000. With the advent of modern sophisticated imaging systems such as CT scans, the discovery of asymptomatic meningiomas has tripled.
I think I'll worry about something else.
- DanBC 14y agoThanks for this; I was about to say pretty much the same thing. Gerd Gigerenzer has a nice book about the way risk is communicated. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerd_Gigerenzer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerd_Gigerenzer) (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Reckoning-Risk-Learning-Uncertainty-ebook/dp/B002RI9I06 http://www.amazon.co.uk/Reckoning-Risk-Learning-Uncertainty-...)
- ceejayoz 14y agoOtis Brawley's "How We Do Harm" is also good reading.
- ck2 14y agoYou don't feel 40 to 90 percent higher risk from bitewings is statistically significant?
- ceejayoz 14y agoIf a tumour is only discovered in an autopsy, it's not clinically significant... and the benefits of the x-rays may well outweigh the risk of such a (in this case, usually benign) tumour.
- larrys 14y agoDefinition per http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK10468/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK10468/ : "Clinically significant: A result that is large enough to affect a patient’s disease state in a manner that is noticeable to the patient and/or caregiver." But "autopsy" means the person died but not when they died. So an autopsy of a person killed by gunshot in their 20's doesn't alters the average lifetime risk from the xrays.
- jerf 14y agoYou added the word "statistically". I know people tend to kvetch about statistical significance almost reflexively, but that's not being done here. I believe the implication here is that it just plain isn't worth worrying about.
- sliverstorm 14y agoNot to mention, cavities and other dental problems pose a measurable threat to your health and longevity (not to mention quality of life), so I would bet a certain amount of radiation risk can actually be offset by the resulting improved dental health.
- ars 14y agoThat's the wrong question. The question is if the X-rays are actually necessary in order to have good dental health, and apparently the answer is no. Dentists use them because "what's the harm", but now that a harm is demonstrated they should use them only when actually necessary (when "the benefit outweighs the risks").
- 14y ago
- wissler 14y agoIf it has the capacity to produce one kind of cancer then it has the capacity to produce a kind of cancer that was not part of the study. What is absurd and contemptible is an attitude that "if such and such medical intervention was not proven to cause harm, then we should act as if it does cause no harm", ignoring the fact that the law of unintended consequences trumps what medical science has not yet proven. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thalidomide http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thalidomide