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One CT scan = 200 Panoramics

April 10, 2012 By Trish Walraven 5 Comments

No doubt you listened to the radio or television news today with a double take whut-What? There’s a Yale study that just came out which links the incidence of meningiomas to the frequency of dental radiographs taken during childhood? Your gentle ionizing beam of extrasensory perception is….BEING CRITICIZED?

Yes, yes it is. But have no fear, because the research, my friend, is also having its validity questioned. Supposedly there’s a significant likelihood of being diagnosed with a benign brain tumor if you grew up going to the dentist regularly and having periodic x-rays. This tumor, called a meningioma, is usually asymptomatic, and the vast majority of the time is discovered only when a person has a routine CT scan.

Okay, so is it just me who sees this flaw in the study? People who have CT scans just for “fun” are most likely to go to the dentist for “fun.” Only you should substitute the word “prevention” for “fun.” There were other people in the study who weren’t diagnosed with meningiomas. Was this because they didn’t have CT scans voluntarily (and their parents didn’t take them to the dentist very often, possibly)? And what is the criteria for needing a scan, since we’re criticizing the “need” for dental x-rays? I mean, CT zapping is not exactly radiation-free.

Go read these articles for yourself so that you’ll have well-formed opinions when patients ask about what they’ve heard in the media to help you turn around any radiation defiance that you may come up against in the next few weeks:

Dental X-Rays Linked to Common Brain Tumor, Study Finds – Huffington Post

Web MD: Annual X-rays May Expose Patients to Unnecessary Risk

Dental x-rays can double brain tumor risk – MSNBC.com

All about Meningiomas from Wikipedia

From ABC News: Early Dental X-Rays Linked to Brain Tumors

Now ask yourself who is healthier: the guy who never took a pill or saw a doctor his whole life, and felt great until the day he died? Or the one who did all the preventive stuff and discovered along the way that yes, he had some imperfections that needed to be treated?

See, it’s a stupid question that is irrelevant. Put it to bed, put this story to bed, go scare the masses with something fun. And yummy. And dangerous.

Like sugar.

For other reading, here’s a PDF of the ADA’s radiography recommendations, along with a previous DentalBuzz parody about radiation safety, and a comparison of dental radiation doses to other medical radiation doses.

Filed Under: News, Preventive Care Tagged With: Brain Tumors, CT scans, Dental X-Rays, Meningiomas, radiation safety

Why the cone was cut

November 8, 2011 By Trish Walraven 1 Comment

Since this month is the 5th anniversary of the moment our practice switched over to digital radiography (and thank goodness we never have to endure the vinegary processing solutions again!), I thought it would be nostalgic to offer up this latest edition of Timewarp Tuesdays and honor The Cone.

Admit it, you can’t help but call the long cylindrical chunk of metal pointing out from your x-ray machine anything but a cone. Even though it probably wasn’t a cone when you were in dental school. It hasn’t been a cone for over 30 years.  But maybe you’re old enough to remember a cone getting pointed at you when you were a kid, like I am.

Back in the early 70’s it was all about sleek and modern – there was something a little sexy about the cone, like it was one-half of a pointy brassiere aimed right next to your eye. A woman would cram something in your mouth, tilt the cone at your face and then leave the room for a moment, giving you time alone with it to contemplate its form and function, maybe try a little small talk with it.

Intriguing, this cone.

Come to find out, it was just a cheap plastic pointer, as exemplified in this advertisement from 1945:

See what I mean about the wistful gaze, our GI mesmerized by that white cone because it reminds him of a part of his sweetheart back home? You can click on him to get a better look at the advertising copy. And AHHHHH! Seriously? Pointing it RIGHT AT HIS CAJONES? We’ve come a long way since then.

Plaskon touted that its cones could withstand “…the terrific impact of X-rays which can disturb the molecular structure of many materials.” Many materials… like human flesh?

Apparently the reason that cones were phased out was because they were an impedance to radiation safety, and so they have since been replaced with the familiar long cylinder collimators. About the same time that the medical community figured out that scatter radiation was preventable, they also realized that imaging could be improved with focused beaming techniques. So the cone is gone, even though the name lives on.

And so to honor the history of dental radiography, I now present you with this Dental Radiographic Cone homage collage:

BZZT! ZAP! [sizzle] ffffphP.  I can almost smell the singe of old wires firing up.

Filed Under: Instruments, Timewarp Tuesdays Tagged With: dental radiography, Plaskon, radiation safety

About

DentalBuzz explores rising trends in dentistry with its own slant. The speed at which new products and ideas enter the dental field can often outpace our ability to understand just exactly the direction in which we are heading. But somehow, by being a little less serious about dentistry and dental care, we might get closer to making sense of it all.

So yeah, a tongue-in-cheek pun would fit really nicely here, but that would be in bad taste. Never mind, it just happened anyways. Stop reading sidebars already and click on some content instead.

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