If you’ve had a meningioma brain tumor, like me, and are wondering why it ever happened to you, maybe we just learned a potential cause: dental X-rays.
According to a study from the Yale School of Medicine, published Tuesday in the American Cancer Society journal Cancer, “people with meningioma were more than twice as likely as people without the brain tumor to have had a bitewing X-ray sometime in their life. For a bitewing X-ray, the patient holds the film in place by biting down on a tab.”
I don’t know about you, but I’ve had a ton of bitewing X-rays in my life.
And, yes, this lends a whole new meaning to the phrase, “bite me.”
The article in The Washington Post went on to report that “Lead author Elizabeth Claus, professor at the Yale School of Public Health and a neurosurgeon at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, noted that risk factors for meningioma, the most commonly diagnosed form of brain tumor, remain poorly understood, in part because meningioma was only added to brain tumor registries in the United States in 2004.”
An ABC report notes that the level of radiation is less than a tenth of the level that is used today. http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/video/dental-rays-brain-tumor-link-16111995
Here’s a link to The Washington Post article - http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-checkup/post/study-links-dental-x-rays-to-brain-tumor-risk/2012/04/09/gIQALz8k6S_blog.html
Here’s a link to the study in the journal Cancer: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/cncr.26625/full
