The influence of population aging and size on the number of CT examinations in The Netherlands.

Exposures to ionizing radiation from medical examinations are on the rise. An important cause for this has been the advent and ever-increasing use of computed tomography (CT) scans for diagnostic purposes. It is often implied that population aging contributes significantly to this rise. Here, the trends in population statistics are compared to the trend in the number of CT scans in the Netherlands for the period 2002-2010. It is concluded that population growth and population aging cannot explain the observed rise in CT examinations. In fact, these factors contribute only 17% to this rise, indicating that there must be other factors that are far more important.