NIH To Track Patients’ Radiation Dose

The National Institutes of Health is taking steps to keep track of radiation exposure at its hospital. The NIH Clinical Center in Bethesda, Md., announced the change August 17. The hospital will adopt new standards for buying computed tomography (CT) and positron emission tomography (PET)/CT machines. New machines will record how much radiation people get from scans. This will go into each person’s electronic record at the hospital. People will be urged to add it to their own personal health record, too. People get seven times as much radiation from medical tests now as they did in the 1980s. Scientists don’t know how much risk this causes. But exposure does build up over time. High doses of radiation can cause cancer.