How We Present Dental x-rays linked to common brain tumor by
Andrew M. Seaman Reuters Translate This Article 10 April 2012
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - A new study suggests people who had
certain kinds of dental X-rays in the past may be at an
increased risk for meningioma, the most commonly diagnosed brain
tumor in the U.S. The findings cannot prove that radiation from
the imaging caused the tumors, and the results are based on
people who were likely exposed to higher levels of radiation
during dental X-rays than most are today. 'It's likely that the
exposure association we're seeing here is past exposure, and
past exposure levels were much higher,' said Dr. Elizabeth
Claus, the study's lead author and a professor at the Yale
School of Medicine in New Haven, Connecticut. Claus and her
colleagues write in the journal Cancer that dental X-rays are
the most common source of exposure to ionizing radiation—which
has been linked to meningiomas in the past—but most research on
the connection is based on people who w