X-ray burns--painful, protracted, and preventable.

Very high doses of x-ray may produce deep burns in the backs of patients having fluoroscopically guided cardiac interventional procedures. While these incidents are uncommon they can be prevented by judicious limitation of fluoroscopy and timely repositioning of the x-ray tube. Better education and improved methods for dose mapping should make these distressing complications a thing of the past. Copyright (c) 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.