Great question! Unfortunately all drugs or treatments may have side effects. Whether its antibiotics for a bad flu or radiation therapy for cancer. Most of the times thankfully there are no side effects. That’s why people get treated for cancer with radiation every day.
If you are talking about imaging we do have ‘non’ (in inverted commas because it’s not always the case) harmful radiation imaging like optical imaging or ultrasound and even MRI that use light and magnets respectively.
On the other hand we radiation imaging like X-rays, CT and Nuclear Medicine. These have been performed for many many years! The amount of radiation use is only slightly more than the background radiation you receive anyway in a year from cosmic rays and building material and radon.
You should always remember that when doctors send a patient for a scan the benefits obtained from getting the scan done will always be a lot more than the risk of something happening due to the radiation.
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