Tag Archives: computerized tomography

How Yale doctors are making CT scans safer for kids

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Greater awareness and careful usage are bringing down the numbers of pediatric CT scans and cutting radiation exposure. Parents should weigh the benefits and risks.

(September 2013) If your child had a CT scan last year—perhaps to assess damage from a hockey injury or rule out appendicitis—he or she added to a huge statistic: more than 4 million pediatric CT scans were performed in the U.S in 2012.

The experience can leave you a little anxious, since the radiation from a CT scan may increase the risk of cancer, especially in children.

Fortunately, that picture may be changing, especially for children, who are even more susceptible to radiation-induced cancer than adults. In data compiled by the American College of Radiology’s Dose Index Registry, which tracks and categorizes the radiation given by CT scanners in U.S. hospitals, Yale-New Haven Children’s Hospital (YNHCH) recorded the lowest doses of any academic hospital in the country in many age groups and types of pediatric radiation. (more…)

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Study Amplifies Understanding of Hearing in Baleen Whales

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For decades, scientists have known that dolphins and other toothed whales have specialized fats associated with their jaws, which efficiently convey sound waves from the ocean to their ears. But until now, the hearing systems of their toothless grazing cousins, baleen whales, remained a mystery.

Unlike toothed whales, baleen whales do not have enlarged canals in their jaws where specialized fats sit. While toothed whales use echolocation to find prey, baleen whales generally graze on zooplankton, and so some scientists have speculated that baleen whales may not need such a sophisticated auditory system. But a new study by scientists at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), published April 10, 2012, in The Anatomical Record, has shown that some baleen whales also have fats leading to their ears. (more…)

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