Minimizing and Communicating Radiation Risk in Pediatric Nuclear Medicine The children of today are the future of the world. The health and well-being of children is one of the most important issues to many people. Nuclear medicine has become a vital tool in diagnosing and helping to treat many different diseases in the world of pediatrics. The benefits of using nuclear medicine for pediatric care are obvious. The disadvantages of using nuclear medicine surround the increased radiation exposure to the children early in life. This article goes into detail in the ways radiation exposure has increased to pediatric patients in recent years. The article also, covers how to communicate the risk to the family members of the patients and lastly, how to reduce …show more content…
Nuclear medicine is “an extremely useful diagnostic tool for the evaluation of children. It provides valuable diagnostic information that may not be easily obtained by other diagnostic imaging methods” (Fahey, Treves, & Adelstein, pp 13, 2012). Due to the usefulness of nuclear medicine it has been utilized incredibly in recent years. There are more than 60 million CT scans done yearly now and over 18 million nuclear medicine studies ( Fahey et al., 2012). The increase in use of nuclear medicine and CT has caused an increase in the exposure to adults and children alike. The radiopharmaceutical dose varies to a certain degree in adults due to patient sizes, weights and the state of the patients. “The radiopharmaceutical dose to children varies” greatly “from that to an adult for several reasons, particularly the patient size” (Fahey et al., pp 14, 2012). The doses absorbed affects children because their organs “are smaller and closer together” (Fahey et al., pp 14, 2012). Pediatric doses are obviously less than adult doses, but the dose to critical and target organs can still be high (Fahey et al.,