The US Food and Drug Administration has decided it is time to crack down on American doctors’ use of radiation-based tests.

Yesterday the FDA announced a new initiative to reduce “unnecessary” radiation exposure from computed tomography (CT) scans, nuclear medicine studies, and fluoroscopy. These tests come with a massive radiation dose compared with more common procedures such as X-rays (one CT abdomen scan = approximately 400 chest X-rays, notes the FDA).

“The amount of radiation Americans are exposed to from medical imaging has dramatically increased over the past 20 years,” says Jeffrey Shuren, director of the FDA’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health (press release). “The goal of FDA’s initiative is to support the benefits associated with medical imaging while minimizing the risks.”

Many American doctors have been warning for a while now that too many radiation-based tests are being undertaken in the US.

Last year the US National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements announced that Americans living in 2006 were exposed to over seven times more radiation from such medical scans than those living in 1980. The American College of Radiology has also issued warnings about the numbers of radiation-based medical tests being conducted. (See: Huge rise in US medical radiation doses – March 04, 2009.)

A Congressional hearing on radiation was supposed to take place this week in Washington, but was snowed off.

The new move by the FDA will include a campaign to increase patient awareness of their own radiation exposure, more support for doctors making decisions on imaging and new requirements for those manufacturing CT and fluoroscope machines.

Sidney Wolfe, of consumer advocacy non-profit Public Citizen, told AP the FDA had been dragging its heels. “The papers cited by the agency … go back as far as several years and the authors of these papers certainly described problems begging for definitive action,” she says.

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