A new peer-reviewed study warns that heavy reliance on CT scans in the U.S. is triggering tens of thousands of future cancer cases.
The multicenter modeling study was led by Dr. Rebecca Smith-Bindman of the University of California, San Francisco.
The results were published in JAMA Internal Medicine.
The study projects that CT use in 2023 alone could ultimately be associated with about 102,700 future cancers.
If current trends in utilization and dosing persist for decades, the authors estimate CT-related cancers could eventually account for up to 5% of annual U.S. diagnoses.
Researchers used data from the UCSF International CT Dose Registry, which includes roughly 121,000 exams from 143 sites in 20 states.
They reconstructed organ-specific doses by age, sex, and exam type, then scaled to national totals of approximately 93 million CT scans performed on 62 million patients in 2023.
Using the National Cancer Institute’s RadRAT tool and BEIR VII risk models, the team projected lifetime radiation-attributable cancers.
Roughly 102,700 future cancers are projected from 2023 scans.
Adults account for around 91% (93,000 cases), though per-exam risk is highest in children, particularly infants.
By cancer type, lung (≈22,400 cases) leads, followed by colon (≈8,700), leukemia (≈7,900), and bladder (≈7,100).
Among women,