There are many reasons to love MRI; not least among them is the fact that this versatile imaging test won't expose the body to ionizing radiation. In a world increasingly taxed with toxins and free radicals, MRI reassures patients that, should they require medical imaging to address a current health issue, the scan won't impact their longevity in the future.
Advances in medical imaging have saved millions of lives, but in one of the biggest paradoxes of modern medicine, imaging methods that use radiation, such as CT scans and X-rays, have been linked to increased risk of cancer. Unfortunately, these numbers are highest in individuals who received exposure to radiation in childhood.
A recent study published in BMJ is the largest study of its kind to date; researchers from Europe and Australia teamed together to look at data collected from 10.9 million people born between 1985-2005, comparing those who received CT scans in early childhood with those who hadn't. After extensive organizing of the data (which included excluding data from brain CTs, as the possibility existed therein that the child receiving the scan might already have had cancer) the results were astonishing: individuals who had received CT scans in childhood had a 24 per cent higher chance of developing cancer than those who didn't, a number which increased 16 per cent with every additional scan performed during an individual's developing years (which are, for the purposes of this study, ages 1-19).
To read more on the study, click here.