Radiation Exposure and Potential Cancer Risk from Cardiac Imaging

*Andrew J Einstein, Columbia University Medical Center 

Keywords: cardiac imaging, radiation dose, cancer risk estimation, optimization

Over 10 million cardiac imaging procedures involving exposure to ionizing radiation are performed annually, and these collectively account for over 10% of the entire ionizing radiation burden to the United States population, from all sources excluding radiotherapy, with myocardial perfusion imaging being the single imaging procedure with the greatest radiation burden to the population. It has been estimated that these procedures may result in thousands of radiation-attributable cancers per year. In this talk, I plan to address radiation doses from nuclear cardiology, cardiac computed tomography, and cardiac fluoroscopic procedures; the evidence base relating these doses to increased cancer risk, including Elaine Ron’s important contributions; radioepidemiological modeling of risk from various cardiac imaging scenarios and its limitations; and dose reduction strategies and their implications in terms of doses and risks.