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What are the risks of having an X-ray done?
- No pain or pressure is felt as invisible electromagnetic radiation from an X-ray passes through the body.
- Modern techniques use only a fraction of the X-ray dose required in the early days of radiology. One single X-ray exposes a patient to approximately 20 milliroentgens of radiation (small traces of radioactive isotopes, such as uranium found in soil and the sun's ultraviolet rays, expose people to approximately 100 milliroentgens of radiation each year).
- Women should always inform the physician or medical radiation technologist if there is any possibility they are pregnant.
- Modern, state-of-the-art X-ray systems have tightly controlled X-ray beams, significant filtration and X-ray dose control methods minimizing stray radiation to other parts of the body.
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