According to a study conducted by Preetha Rajaraman of the U.S. National Cancer Institute, there is a small additional risk of cancer for kids who had X-rays done before they were three months old or whose mothers had X-rays conducted while pregnant.
In order to do their research, Rajarman and her associates collected information on the X-rays and ultrasounds done among 3,690 kids with cancer and 4,858 healthy children who participated in the U.K. childhood cancer study.
The mothers of 305 children had multiple X-ray examinations while pregnant and 170 kids got at least one diagnostic X-ray examination during infancy. Further, researchers found that there were 13,723 ultrasounds done during pregnancy and 138 conducted on young infants.
Based on the findings, it was deduced that kids whose mothers had X-rays done while they were pregnant had an increased risk for all childhood cancers and leukemia. When the kids themselves had X-rays in early infancy done, they had small, insignificant increased risks for various forms of cancers.
The report appeared online on February 10 in BMJ.
Above all else, this study simply notes how important it is that doctors and medical personnel take complete and total caution when doing X-Rays on pregnant women and newborns.
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