A Health Care Personnel Guide For Assessing Radiation Risk And Selecting Imaging Procedures In Pregnant Women
Easy-print edition of this Guide
This reference material is for use by medical staff affiliated with Brigham and Women's Hospital only. It is designed to inform your decision-making as you determine individual risks associated with medical imaging and communicate with your patients. It should not be interpreted as medical advice, nor is it necessarily germane to institutions using other imaging protocols. Patients with questions regarding these issues should speak directly with their caregivers. An additional resource is the
Ask the Experts-Pregnancy and Radiation module of the Health Physics Society:
http://www.hps.org
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Estimating Risk to the Fetus
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Effects of Irradiation
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Significant doses of radiation have been shown to cause latent leukemia and various cancers in adults and children which become manifest years after the exposure. The fetus is assumed to have the same risk for potential radiocarcinogenic effects as children, which is 2 to 3 times higher than the adult risk. A study of prenatal and childhood cancer studies showed a relative risk (RR) of 1.4 (40% increase above the normal incidence) following a fetal dose of ~ 10 mGy. The normal incidence of childhood cancer is ~ 0.2-0.3 %, so a 10 mGy fetal dose would increase this incidence to ~0.35%.
A fetal dose of 10-20 mGy raises the incidence of childhood leukemia to 5/10,000 from a baseline rate of 3.6/10,000.
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