Pregnant Woman's CT Scans Used to Make Advances in Pregnancy Radiation Treatments
Medical imaging can be used for many things. However, typical medical imaging is not used for treating patients who are pregnant. That's because the fetus is highly sensitive to all medical treatments and no one wants to use unnecessary medical technology on a growing baby. In addition to imaging, there are other procedures which are rarely done on pregnant women. For example, radiation isn't done during pregnancy because of the risk that it would expose the baby to damaging radiation.
However, there have been advancements made that may allow women who absolutely need radiation during pregnancy to unergo the treatments with reduced harm to the baby. That's because a new study made use of
CT scan images of a pregnant patient to create an imaging model which more accurately shows where the radiation treatments of a pregnant woman should be done. The CT scan images were obtained accidentally when a woman who didn't know she was pregnant had a scan done several years ago. This accident was able to provide important information about the body that was used in the development of the new technology.
You can learn more about this interesting study
here.
Question of the Day: In what circumstances can you see getting radiation while pregnant?photo link
