The 12-month program is being led by ECRI Institute, a nonprofit health-care research organization in Plymouth Meeting. Hospitals and imaging centers in Philadelphia and its four suburban counties are invited to submit data on patient radiation doses so they can compare themselves with their peers. Participants also will take part in surveys and seminars and have access to a special website for discussion, program manager Kathy Shostek said.
The issue caught fire in 2009 and 2010, when the Food and Drug Administration identified at least 385 patients who received excess radiation at five hospitals in California and one in Alabama.
These patients received CT brain perfusion scans, which are used to confirm a stroke and have higher expected doses than typical CT scans. But the agency also found that the machines had been misused, leading to radiation doses up to eight times the intended level. Some patients experienced hair loss and reddening of the skin.
Since then, numerous professional groups have weighed in, identifying instances of possible overuse but nevertheless cautioning that in most cases, the scans are medically necessary and well worth the small risk from radiation.
When properly used, CT scanners never cause short-term effects such as hair loss, said Rohit Inamdar, a medical physicist at ECRI, which is running the 12-month program at the invitation of the nonprofit Health Care Improvement Foundation.
In the long term, there is a theoretical risk that radiation from one scan can cause cancer, but it is slight. A typical CT scan is estimated to increase a person's lifetime risk a small fraction of 1 percent, Inamdar said, though the risk is higher in children.
