ABSTRACT
A P T E R 19 Medical Exposures: Adverse Consequences and Unintended Exposures Fred A. Mettler, Jr. Department of Radiology, University of New Mexico, School of Medicine, NM, USA
M edical radiation use accounts for more than 99.9% of the per capitadose from man-made sources (NCRP 2009). Worldwide, medical proce-dures using radiation grew from an estimated 1.7 billion in 1980 to a staggering almost 4 billion in 2007 (UNSCEAR 2006). Overall, the benefit from medical exposure vastly outweighs the risks (Holmberg 2010). Adverse consequences and unintended radiation exposures are rare in medicine but they do occur and the consequences can range from often negligible to rarely fatal. At low doses, there is the question of cancer induction and at higher doses there can be various tissue effects. Although it is largely unappreciated, high dose accidents in medical exposure have resulted in more acute radiation deaths than from any other accidental or occupational source including Chernobyl (Gusev 2001).
