Biological effects of radiation from dental radiography. Council on Dental Materials, Instruments, and Equipment.

Clearly, there is ample evidence of adverse effects of radiation in sufficient doses. There is at present no proof of such effects from doses commonly employed in dental practice; however, it has not been possible to prove the absence of such effects. Most experts now agree that there may be a small, difficult to quantify risk of cancer or genetic mutation from diagnostic exposure in patients and in personnel exposed during work. Prudence dictates acceptance of this position until proof to the contrary is available. This report has presented recent attempts to quantify the risk to patients based on speculative calculations and extrapolations. Indices of population risks indicate that medical radiology is the largest source of human-made genetic and leukemogenic radiation burden to the American public. Dental radiology contributes a small-but not necessarily insignificant-portion. Of major concern is the increasing use of radiation for diagnostic purposes in both medicine and dentistry. Technological advances have reduced exposure per examination; presumably this trend will continue so that total exposure of populations to radiation in the healing arts will not increase. Recent analyses suggest that the cancer risk to a patient from a dental radiographic examination is of the order of one in a million; the genetic risk is substantially less, about one in a billion. The risks appear to be essentially equal for full-mouth intraoral and for panoramic examinations. These estimates are numerically quite small, but the effects are severe. Thus, these risks cannot be ignored. However, we currently accept risks of similar magnitude in our daily lives [Table 9]50,51 In addition, the risk of failure to make an accurate diagnosis may be greater than the risk from exposure to the radiation from a justified and properly conducted radiographic examination. It therefore appears reasonable that the information gained from a justified and properly conducted radiographic examination outweighs the risk.