Treatment resulting from cancers that arise from CT radiation exposure may cost the U.S. billions of dollars -- as much as $50 million per mSv of radiation per year -- concluded a meta-analysis presented at last week's American Roentgen Ray Society meeting (ARRS 2016) in San Diego.
Researchers from the University of Arizona in Tucson estimated cancer treatment costs in the U.S. attributable to each CT exam per mSv, based on the risk of cancer estimated in the Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation (BEIR) VII report.
Considering total direct cancer treatment costs of $87.5 billion in 2012 for 15.5 million adults, the study team calculated a per-patient expenditure of $5,631. Going on to assume a dose of 5 mSv per scan and incorporating radiation-induced cancer estimates from BEIR VII, they calculated the risk of inducing a malignancy at 5.5 cases per 10,000 patients.
Finally, applying these results to the estimated 85 million CT studies in 2012, the group estimated 46,750 additional cancers over the lifetime of the scanned patients. Total costs were estimated at $244 million to $263 million annually or $2.44 billion to $2.63 billion over a decade, wrote Dr. Matt Covington and colleagues.
The benefits of medical imaging are substantial, but the small rate of induced cancers attributable to CT scans represents a large and hidden cost when added up over several years, they wrote.
As a result, efforts to minimize patient dose may results in substantial cost savings and should be incentivized, the group concluded.
