Dental X-rays could double the risk for the most common brain tumor, according to a study released Tuesday from scientists and doctors at Yale, Harvard and other prestigious institutions published in Cancer, a scientific journal of the American Cancer Society.
It sounds frightening — and there is no question it invokes a serious warning — but even those who carried out the research urge people not to overreact.
“Our take home message is don’t panic. Don’t stop going to the dentist,” said the lead author of the study Dr. Elizabeth Claus, a neurological surgeon at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston and the Yale School of Public Health.
But people “should have a conversation with their dentist” about the need to use X-rays as little as possible to keep teeth healthy, Claus says. That’s a conclusion few would dispute, with or without the new study.
The tumor studied is meningioma, a type that is usually not malignant, meaning it can grow but not spread. To be sure, it can cause severe problems in some patients. But people with meningiomas often live long, healthy lives with no treatment, dying of some other cause. Doctors diagnose about 5,000 cases a year in the United States, about three times as often in women as in men.
Significantly, the study is the weakest type of epidemiology, a so-called “case control” study. The researchers interviewed 1,433 people diagnosed with meningioma and compared them with 1,350 people with no such diagnosis. The two groups were matched for age, gender, race, income and places of residence. In a tiny portion of the cases the researchers actually looked at dental records. But, most often, they asked the study subjects – whose average age was 57 — to recall their history of dental X-rays going back to childhood.
The news coverage of this paper fails to well explain that meningiomas are generally benign and that the radiation studied was from a largely outmoded technology. Modern digital dental x-rays use about 1/4th the radiation of the older “D” type films. It is not clear that this “case control” study should have any impact on dentist’s decision to use low radiation images to supplement their clinical examinations. Without question, many patients will be inappropriately frightened.
Dear Picker22: You’re correct, MODERN x-rays use less rads. Is thermographics any better for imaging? Do you know of any dental specialists that put in drains from tooth-roots, to prevent anerobic blow-back? I guess any “Nano-drains” would be vunerable to good brushing/flossing, plus it’d be oral surgery to install them, in the first place.
This an argument for keeping your dentist, as long as he is giving you the care you need, because when you change dentists, that’s often an excuse to have x-rays. Because root-canals seal-up dead material, watch out for infections that can do systemic damage(heart-valves, other areas), due to anerobic infection. We also need to NOT use Floride toothpastes, foss-often, use an ultra-sonic toothbrush, have cleanings twice a year, and don’t let them give you an amalgam-filling, although the resin fillings will work-out more often than an amalgam. if one developes cancer, one can usually take grams of Vit-C crystals, to keep inflamation down, and the immune system up, while your doctor’s killing everything (cancer AND your immune-system) with anti-neoplastics and/radiation. Try to increase the alkalinity of your diet, as many foods turn the blood acidic, which will cause the body to rip-out calcium to balance acidity in the blood, plus acidity in the blood SUPPORTS many infections. Once the cancer’s in remission, build-up your immune system, so you’ll be ready for another Treatment-regime, should it be necessary. Get together, often, with one or more friends to do “guided-imagry” and prayer, and resolve to live each day, one at a time, and to the Max, Everything in Moderation. God is your best friend, spend serious “face-time” with God. Because the Communists are knowingly/un-knowingly allied to Satan, pray for Satan’s change/confusion, and pray for the leaders of this country, FOR the country, not the leaders.
Beyond the weak methodology, consider this:
“Doctors diagnose about 5,000 cases a year
in the United States”
Out of 300,000,000 people who get dental
xrays. So your chances of getting it any
particular year are 0.0016667%. Cut out
dental xrays (YUCK!), and it could be
0.00083%, according to this study.
Nothing to see here, folks. It’s another one of
them “double-your-chances-of-getting-
something-when-the-chances-of-getting-it-
in-the-first-place-are-remote studies.