Researchers cite 'dramatic' increase in CT scans for kids

Of all the kids who go to emergency rooms in the U.S., about 6 percent are there because of stomach pains, according to researchers analyzing a large national database.

This abdominal CT scan reveals cysts.

(Credit: Steven Fruitsmaak )

And while that 6 percent rate has held steady over the past decade, with anywhere from 2 percent to 8 percent being diagnosed with appendicitis (the number fluctuated without any clear pattern), the percentage of kids getting CT scans has jumped from 0.9 percent to 15.4 percent between 1998 and 2008, the researchers wrote in the current issue of the journal Pediatrics.

"That is basically saying for every six or seven kids that go to the ER for bellyache, one is going to get a CT scan," Dr. Jahan Fahimi, an emergency physician at the University of California, San Francisco, who led the new work, told Reuters Health.

Fahimi added that while the risk of a CT scan causing cancer is largely unknown, "I tell my patients that the CT scan I do today has a chance of causing cancer at some point down the road. That risk may be one in 500, it may be one in 1,0... [Read more]