September is National Childhood Cancer Awareness Month: Protect Your Child From Unnecessary Radiation Overexposure

Source: American Childhood Cancer Organization

In the U.S. each year, more than 13,000 children under age 19 are diagnosed with cancer and ~1 in 300 boys and ~1 in 333 girls will develop cancer before their 20th birthdays. 

Source: American Childhood Cancer Organization

In an effort to raise awareness for National Childhood Cancer Awareness Month, Nephosity would like to inform you about protecting your child from radiation overexposure by taking control of your child's medical records and, specifically, your child's medical images.

An estimated 10% to 20% of medical imaging performed today occurs as a result of duplicate imaging. 

"... Typically, patients receive copies of a medical image on a CD, which can easily be lost, damaged or even contain someone else's information. And because competing vendors sell incompatible equipment, one doctor sometimes can't view another's image on a CD without a long conversion process... As a result, scans and other images are often repeated, piling up healthcare costs and exposing patients to additional and potentially harmful doses of radiation ..."

- Wall Street Journal, April 2013

With 1 in 5 imaging procedures occurring as a result of lost or otherwise malfunctioning CDs, your child may be unnecessarily exposed to higher levels of radiation should they ever require medical imaging.

In addition, according to the National Cancer Institute, unique considerations must be taken regarding radiation exposure in children, given: 

- children are considerably more sensitive to radiation than adults
- children have a longer life expectancy than adults, resulting in a larger window of opportunity for expressing radiation damage
- children may receive a higher radiation dose than necessary if CT settings are not adjusted for their smaller body size 

"As a result, the risk for developing a radiation-related cancer can be several times higher for a young child compared with an adult exposed to an identical CT scan..."
- National Cancer Institute

While improvements in CT equipment over the last decade have allowed for better images at lower doses, multiple scans to an individual patient present a particular concern. In addition, the use of more than one scan during a single examination further increases radiation dose. In the vast majority of cases, a single scan should be sufficient during pediatric CT. 

To avoid risk of radiation overexposure, remove CDs from the equation and gain control over your child's images by uploading them to our secure, HIPAA-compliant cloud-based server. Uploading is completely free, and once you have uploaded your images, you will have the ability to view or share these images via your web browser, iPad or other mobile device:

Image Flow

September is National Childhood Cancer Awareness Month. Protect yours and all children from unnecessary radiation exposure by gaining control of your medical images today. Request a free invitation, here, and begin uploading on JackImaging.com today.



For more information, visit the Alliance for Radiation Safety in Pediatric Imaging and the Society for Pediatric Radiology.

Sources: American Childhood Cancer Organization, National Cancer Institute