(CNN) -- Every six months like clockwork, Melissa O'Brien, a freelance writer in Kennesaw, Georgia, takes her two children, Alexandra and Evan, to the dentist for a cleaning. They're nearly perfect patients -- Alexandra, 13, has no cavities, and Evan, 10, has had only one -- but O'Brien suspects she may not be the dentist's favorite mom, because when the dentist suggests X-rays, O'Brien sometimes says no, and she can tell that doesn't sit well.
"I usually get a hard time from the dentist, like I'm a bad mother or something," she says. "Maybe I'm being silly as a parent. Maybe it's such a minute amount of radiation, but I think, my kid is going to get how many X-rays in his life, and if I can prevent some of them why not do it?"
Maybe she is being silly -- but maybe not. It's impossible to tell, because there are no good studies showing the right number of X-rays to give someone who isn't having any particular dental problem. While some dentists do bitewing X-rays every six months on a healthy patient, others hardly ever do them, relying instead on a visual examination of the mouth with a sharp explorer and a mirror.
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3 comments:
Until your kid has an undiagnosed abcess that goes to his brain and kills him. Yes, a kid died in DC, two years ago, from a dental abcess.
i go to the u. of md. dental school. my dentist is a professor there. they do not give x-rays for dental work unless a problem is seen. i haven't had a dental x-ray in over 6 years. and that was the first in 8. so 1 in 14 years at the dentist at U. of MD. dental school... they stopped that over 20 years ago. it is the dental schools opinion it is a possible problem with to much radiation.
I had to have a root canal, and two x-rays were taken in a week. It seems strange that I am in my 60's and started having thyroid problems two weeks later.
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