Dental X-Rays can cause Brain Tumour
Although many of the Dental Treatments require prior examination of teeth with the help of Dental X-rays but it has now been proved that the excess use of these can cause primary Brain Tumour. The news was published few days before in Cancer journal of American Cancer Society in the United States. So there is great risk for those who are frequently taking some dose of Dental X-rays or have taken in the past years.
In United States, Meningioma has been known as the most occurring primary tumour of the brain and the main cause of its occurrence is high dose of Ionising radiations. But the occurrence is not so common as 8 people per 100,000 has been detected as victims of the same. Meningioma occurs in women at a very high rate than the men getting affected under the same conditions. Dental X-Rays have been proved the main cause as this the common artificial source of providing Ionising Radiations.
These Dental X-rays when causes Brain Tumours, only the nearby meninges of Brain get affected and the tumour develop there for a long time. It is hard to notice this at the beginning but in size it can extend and cross the dimensions of basket ball. Although the growth is not cancerous but its invasion into brain can leads to many problems like having headaches, defects in vision or loss of speech.
The whole examination of relation between Dental X-Rays and the occurrence of Brain Tumour was conducted by Elizabeth Claus (MD, PhD of Yale University of School of Medicine in New Heaven) and her team. The experiment was conducted on the group of 1500 people suffering from meningioma belonging to age group of 20-79 years of age and same number of those without the disease to use as controls. When the results were compared the fact came into light that in the people who were exposed to frequent Dental X-rays, risk was 1.4-2.9 times greater than the others and with the use of Panorex i.e. use of Dental X-rays outside the mouth, risk was 2-3 times.
As the risk is high but also there is need of X-rays for Dental Treatment, some guidelines have been given to the Dentists about its use and frequency of use. According to this in children, Dental X-Rays should be used once in every 1-2 years, in teens the time should be 1.5-3 years for use of one Dental X-ray and for the adults it should be used once in 2-3 years.
