Low radiation doses; are they harmful in infancy?
Adults usually ask their physician about the kind of treatment they will be given and especially whether ionizing radiation applied for therapeutic purposes is harmful. When these treatments are applied to children and especially to infants of <18 months of age, parents should be more reluctant to give their consent for such a treatment. A paper under the title "Effect of low doses of ionizing radiation in infancy on cognitive function in adulthood: Swedish population based cohort study" written by Hall P, Adami HO, Trichopoulos D, et al. and published in the British Journal of Medicine 2004, 328:19-21 presents new and important data referring to 3094 males who at an age of <18 months had undergone radiation treatment for haemangiomas of the head and other dermatological lesions. The doses they received in their brain were from 20 mGy to > 250 mGy. Findings were exciting. 17%-32% of these infants did not attend highschool lessons. Many failed to pass tests related to cognitive tests for learning ability or logical reasoning. On the contrary spatial recognition was intact. As the authors state it is important to know that a cranial tomography examination administers to the brain of infants about 120 mGy. These doses are relevant to the doses tested above and found harmful. More radiation protection studies about the possible harmful effects on humans who receive doses of radiation for diagnostic and/or therapeutic purposes, are necessary.
Asteriadis
Ioannis
I
Director of Nuclear Medicine Department of Kavala General Hospital, Greece.