Mortality rates of modern radiologists similar to other medical fields

Good news, medical imaging specialists: radiologists who graduated after 1940 do not have increased mortality rates due to exposure to radiation, according to a recent study published in Radiology.

Amy Berrington de González, DPhil, National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Md., and colleagues studied data from the American Medical Association Physician Masterfile on more than 43,000 radiologists and more than 64,000 psychiatrists who graduated from medical school in the years 1916 through 2006.

Overall, male radiologists had lower death rates than male psychiatrists, and the cancer death rates of the two professions were similar.

Death rates related to acute myeloid leukemia and/or myelodysplastic syndrome, however, were higher for radiologists. The researchers emphasized that this was due to death rates of radiologists who graduated before 1940.

“Occupational radiation doses have been reduced substantially, and we found no evidence of excess mortality in U.S. radiologists who graduated from medical school after 1940, possibly because of increased radiation protection and/or lifestyle changes,” the authors wrote.

And how is the profession safer for today’s radiologists? Berrington de González et al. provided some insight.

“There have been dramatic improvements in radiation protection since the earliest radiologists started practicing, including general lead shielding of equipment, personal use of lead aprons and glasses, and use of room shields,” the authors wrote. “Early fluoroscopy procedures were likely a common and important source of radiation exposure to the radiologists who were practicing before 1940. Decreases in the maximum permissible occupational dose have also occurred, and changes in radiation protection have changed the organs that received the highest radiation exposure. Early radiologists had high skin doses to hands and arms, used no personal protection garments, and received whole-body exposure from unshielded x-ray tubes.”

The authors’ research did reveal an unexpected connection between individuals who graduated medical school before 1940 and skin cancer.

“Skin cancer mortality, particularly melanoma, was also increased in the radiologists who graduated before 1940, which is interesting because ionizing radiation is not thought to be a cause of melanoma,” the authors wrote. “There were significant excess risks of deaths from nonmelanoma skin cancer in the United Kingdom and in the previous cohort of U.S. radiologists, but not melanoma. Melanoma is a relatively rare cancer and, therefore, has been difficult to study in most previous radiation epidemiology cohorts.”