Radiation Exposure From X-rays In Children - Cedars-Sinai

What is radiation exposure from X-rays in children?

X-rays are a kind of imaging test. They give your healthcare provider information about structures inside the body. These tests expose children to low doses of radiation.

X-rays are forms of radiant energy. They are like light or radio waves. X-rays have more energy than rays of visible light or radio waves. They can penetrate your body. This lets the radiologist get X-ray pictures. You can then view these pictures on a photographic film or on a computer monitor.

You may be concerned about exposing your child to radiation. But radiation is around us all the time. Every day, we take in small amounts of radiation from the sun and other sources. People who live at high altitudes or who take many flights are around even more radiation exposure.

But radiation can damage living tissue and alter DNA. This is especially so in large doses. In very large doses, it can cause severe sickness and death. Medical tests use much, much smaller doses of radiation. They don’t cause such problems. These lower doses of radiation may not be completely risk free, though. The main concern is that radiation exposure may slightly raise your child’s risk of cancer later in life. Some of this radiation exposure might come from natural sources. But some of it can come from certain medical tests, like X-rays.

Certain kinds of X-ray imaging expose your child to more radiation than others. Continuous X-ray (fluoroscopy) may expose your child to more radiation than a single X-ray. A computed tomography (CT) scan is another type of imaging test that uses X-ray technology. A CT scan exposes your child to much more radiation than a single X-ray image (radiograph).