Multiple Myeloma an incurable disease, but I have spent the last 25 years in remission using a blend of conventional oncology and evidence-based nutrition, supplementation, and lifestyle therapies from peer-reviewed studies that your oncologist probably hasn't told you about.
Click the orange button to the right to learn more about what you can start doing today.
Imaging cancer risk for myeloma patients and survivors increases with each dose of radiation. The study linked below estimates the risk of future cancers that result from annual computed tomography aka CT scans.
Good news and bad news. Radiation-induced cancer is a risk of the long-term MM survivors. The bad news is that MM is a cancer that relies heavily on imaging aka CT’s, MRI’s and PET scans.
Yes, your risk of cancer from a single CT scan is tiny. If you were like me however, you may have gotten sunburned as a kid, you may have flown in jets and your onc. may want to scan you routinely from now on.
My point is that radiation is cumulative. And you have or will have undergone chemotherapy as well. Also increasing your risk of a treatment-related cancer.
In my experience as a long-term MM survivor who is struggling with several long-term and late stage treatment related side effects, oncology doesn’t know much about the long-term side effects of many of the therapies that they prescribe. I’m thinking of the many cardiotoxic chemo regimens that my onc. prescribed.
The solution? First, talk to your oncologist. Your use of CTs can be minimized in lieu of MRIs. Always check with your health insurer to make sure that the MRI is covered. Secondly, practice those evidence-based non-conventional therapies that have been shown to reduce the risk of cancer such as:
Email me at David.PeopleBeatingCancer@gmail.com with questions about your MM.
Good luck,
David Emerson
Importance Approximately 93 million computed tomography (CT) examinations are performed on 62 million patients annually in the United States, and ionizing radiation from CT is a known carcinogen.
Objective To project the number of future lifetime cancers in the US population associated with CT imaging in 2023…
Main Outcomes and Measures Distributions of CT examinations and associated organ-specific radiation doses were estimated by patient age, sex, and CT category and scaled to the US population based on the number of examinations in 2023, quantified by the IMV national survey.
Lifetime radiation-induced cancer incidence and 90% uncertainty limits (UL) were estimated by age, sex, and CT category using National Cancer Institute software based on the National Research Council’s Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation VII models and projected to the US population using scaled examination counts.
Results An estimated 61 510 000 patients underwent 93 000 000 CT examinations in 2023, including 2 570 000 (4.2%) children, 58 940 000 (95.8%) adults, 32 600 000 (53.0%) female patients, and 28 910 000 (47.0%) male patients. Approximately 103 000 (90% UL, 96 400-109 500) radiation-induced cancers were projected to result from these examinations. Estimated radiation-induced cancer risks were higher in children and adolescents, yet higher CT utilization in adults accounted for most (93 000; 90% UL, 86 900-99 600 [91%]) radiation-induced cancers.
The most common cancers were:
while in female patients breast was second most common (5700 cases; 90% UL, 5000-6500 cases).
The largest number of cancers was projected to result from abdomen and pelvis CT in adults, reflecting 37 500 of 103 000 cancers (37%) and 30 million of 93 million CT examinations (32%), followed by chest CT (21 500 cancers [21%]; 20 million examinations [21%]).
Estimates remained large over a variety of sensitivity analyses, which resulted in a range of 80 000 to 127 000 projected cancers across analyses.
Conclusions and Relevance This study found that at current utilization and radiation dose levels, CT examinations in 2023 were projected to result in approximately 103 000 future cancers over the course of the lifetime of exposed patients.
If current practices persist, CT-associated cancer could eventually account for 5% of all new cancer diagnoses annually…
In this study, approximately 5% of annual cancer diagnoses or 100 000 cancers were projected to result from CT utilization in 2023.
Despite public attention to the potential adverse effects, CT use has grown significantly in the United States since 2009. In 2023, 93 million CT examinations were performed in the United States; in 2007, the number was 68.7 million—a 35% increase incompletely explained by population growth.38
Justification of use and optimization of dose, including consideration of the need for multiphase examinations, are the tenets of CT imaging and must be applied uncompromisingly to mitigate potential harm.”
Imaging cancer myeloma Imaging cancer myeloma Imaging cancer myeloma