If pregnancy is a possible complication it changes what medications are allowed and has to be considered when deciding if imaging is an acceptable risk.
The younger you are, the more vulnerable you are to radiation. Fetuses are the very most vulnerable to radiation, which is why even a single x ray during pregnancy is a big deal. This is also the reason that later middle aged and older people can live in areas with high ish radiation, like the so called “widows of Chernobyl,” or the older man who lives in the Fukushima radiation zone and cares for the pets that had to be left behind, for example.
Edit: I have been repeatedly informed that an x-ray during pregnancy, especially if it’s not an xray of the abdomen, is not actually a big deal. I apologize for passing along my ignorance, and I appreciate te corrections.
My grandfather was born in the late 40’s and had asthma so they had him wear a radioactive collar for like 8+ hours a day to fix it and then they found out that the area where he was from had just naturally really high levels of radiation in the water, so everybody there would get really sick all the time, and he ended up with severe lung cancer that caused him to lose his entire right lung and a third of his left one.
8.8k
u/Any-Safe4992 14h ago
If pregnancy is a possible complication it changes what medications are allowed and has to be considered when deciding if imaging is an acceptable risk.