Scanning for calcium deposits in the walls of the arteries around the heart can help detect coronary artery disease — the most common form of heart disease in the U.S. — but the CT scans that are used for the screening come at a cost: an increased risk of radiation-induced cancer. A new study in the Archives of Internal Medicine finds that if adult men were to be scanned every five years from ages 45 to 75, and women from 55 to 75, there would be an estimated additional 42 cases of cancer for every 100,000 men and 62 cases per 100,000 women, over the course of a lifetime. That added risk may not sound like much, but it adds to the controversy surrounding coronary calcium scans. The US Preventive Services Task Force recommends against routine coronary artery calcium screening using CT

because there’s a lack of evidence showing that it actually helps improve outcomes for patients who don’t show symptoms of heart disease. And the American Heart Association recommends a CT scanning technique that exposes patients to the lowest possible amount of radiation, according to an editorial accompanying the study. The added cancer risk of CT scans should be taken into account in future research examining the cost-effectiveness of coronary artery calcium screening, and clinicians should do their best to reduce the dose of radiation patients are exposed to, according to the editorial. Bonus Radiation : For more on the tricky task of trying to quantify the cancer risk associated with CT scans, see this 2007 Health Blog post . Broken heart by CarbonNYC via Flickr

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Study Assesses Cancer Risk From Coronary Artery Screening