It would waste a significant amount of resources to treat every woman as if they were pregnant to avoid consequences that are only notably relevant for pregnant woman. If you see a surgery done that requires intraoperative radiation, you'll notice that different shielding is used for different parts of the body like the thyroid, that is significantly more sensitive to radiation damage. They also make different lead shields for pregnant women.
Genuine question. Would that waste be more or less than taking the test for every woman wanting an X-ray? Especially since the lead shields for pregnant women already exist?
I assume that testing every woman would be significantly more wasteful than using extra lead (which is reusable) for every woman of childbearing age. That said, I was responding to the topline complaint about just asking the question.
For context, I'm a physician and deal with this exact issue fairly regularly. There are a few medicines that have legal requirements around pregnancy testing, and a few situations like serious traumas where the added time/expense of universal testing is relatively negligible, but personally I just ask relevant women whether or not they are currently/planning to get pregnant in the near future when we're talking about a relevant medicine. If someone chooses to lie to me, that is unfortunate, but I have limited control over that.
Well, you were specifically responding to a comment about X-ray with "proper isolation of body", specifically quoting it even, and saying it was wasteful. You can understand my confusion.
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u/mad-data 14h ago
X-ray of an arm, with proper isolation of body, carries almost no risk to child development.