Popular Heart Test May Expose Patients to High-Dose Radiation

“Not only do you have the heart of an eighteen year-old, you have the heart of an eighteen year-old athlete.”

That is what the cardiologist told me after analyzing a 64-Slice CT scan of my heart. I was doing a story on the new lifesaving technology for CBS News. This so-called cardiac computed tomography angiography, or CCTA, provides quick and exquisite pictures of the heart muscle and its arteries. My arteries were wide-open, and that was good news indeed.

Now some bad news…A new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association finds the popular diagnostic test may expose patients to high doses of radiation. How high? The average CCTA exposed patients to the equivalent of 600 chest x-rays.

Cardiac CT Angiography (CCTA) provides detailed pictures of the heart anatomy.

For the study German researchers measured the radiation exposure level of nearly 2000 patients who underwent CCTA at fifty international hospitals. While they found some centers protected patients well from excess radiation, other centers performed very poorly. In many cases the physicians and staff were unaware of the exposure level or measures to reduce it.

“The study demonstrates that radiation exposure can be reduced substantially by uniformly applying the currently available strategies for dose reduction, but these strategies are used infrequently,” the authors write.

The dose of radiation during CCTA is high enough to slightly raise the lifetime risk of cancer. Studies performed on abdominal CT scans find they increase the lifetime risk of cancer death by about 0.02%.

There is really no reliable way for patients to know how much radiation they are being exposed to during CCTA. But having a frank conversation with your cardiologist about the necessity of the test is a logical first step. -Sean Kenniff, MD 

Dr. Sean Kenniff is a neurologist and health journalist in Miami, Florida. 

***If you are a physician, health journalist, or other healthcare professional and would like to contribute you own original journalism to Healthapalooza Special Reports, please email for submission guidelines. drseankenniff@gmail.com