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15,000 Will Die From CT Scans Done In 1 Year Scans have higher levels of radiation than thought, researchers say Dec. 14: According to new reports in the Archives of Internal Medicine, radiation exposure from commonly performed CT scans may contribute to thousands of future cancer cases. NBC's Robert Bazell reports. Dec . 14, 2009 CHICAGO - Radiation from CT scans done in 2007 will cause 29,000 cancers and kill nearly 15,000 Americans, researchers said Monday. The findings, published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, add to mounting evidence that Americans are overexposed to radiation from diagnostic tests, especially from...

Global production of the feedstock for the leading medical-imaging isotope is low and erratic, putting health care in jeopardy. Within the next two weeks, the vast majority of radioactive-imaging medical tests could be delayed or replaced by less desirable procedures. The reason: temporary shutdowns of Canadian and Dutch reactors that together normally provide some 70 percent of the world’s supplies of the isotope molybdenum-99 and at least 80 percent of North American supplies. Each week, U.S. doctors prescribe some 300,000 medical-imaging tests that rely on technetium-99m, a radioactive isotope produced from molybdenum-99. About half of those tests measure heart function....