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Avatar universal

xray help

Hi on Friday I took some xrays after I removed my braces and now I'm really scared because I'm 14 weeks pregnant. Can anything bad happen to my baby ??
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Avatar universal
I work in a dental office and taking a panaramic xray is the same radiation exposure you would get flying to Florida and back. You should be fine.  They would have skipped the xray if they knew you were pregnant so make sure to let them know for any future visits.
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726324 tn?1324074610
There is a risk but its what they used to do back in the day before ultrasounds! My grandma had an x-ray with kids and they were fine.  Try not to worry too much.
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Avatar universal
Since there is some conflicting opinions on the risk, I suggest you return to the office where you had the x-rays performed and ask them what the risk may have been, possibly getting some numbers for how much dose you got. You can then go to your pregnancy doctor with the information and get his/her opinion.

You can also research the this information pretty easily online, making sure you use creditable information, like information from sites ending with .gov or .edu. Here is another link from the US Center for Disease Control (http://www.bt.cdc.gov/radiation/prenatal.asp) that is very helpful.

It says, "Most researchers agree that babies who receive a small dose of radiation (equal to 500 chest x-rays or less) at any time during pregnancy do not have an increased risk for birth defects. The only increased risk to these babies is a slightly higher chance of having cancer later in life (less than 2% higher than the normal expected cancer risk of 40 to 50%)."

Sometimes the stress you put yourself through worrying about different things can be more harmful than what you think may have caused problems.
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Avatar universal
I wasn't even allowed in the room while my son got an xray of his hand. they are pretty strict about no xrays while pregnant. I even remember one xray i had to get for one of the kids the tech double covered my belly when we were just 'trying' to get pregnant just incase and i wasn't even the one getting xrayed at the time i was just in the room. i hope u and ur baby r ok.
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1901977 tn?1333991726
I don't want to scare you because we have enough to be worried about in pregnancy, but yes you did take a risk, and that's a vulnerable period for X-rays. At least it wasn't an X-ray of your abdomen, that would have been really bad. If you need any future ones done, just be careful to tell the X-ray tech you are pregnant so you can be double-shielded.
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Avatar universal
Im a x-ray tech and yes something bad can happen. Birth defect or miscarriage. Its the techs responsibility to ask every woman frist if pregnant with signed waver. Hope everything ends up okay with you and the baby.
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Avatar universal
This website should help calm you: http://www.physics.isu.edu/radinf/risk.htm

It compares effective radiological doses of different medical procedures compared to what people receive each year from natural background sources.

The average dental x-ray is about 10 mrem. You had two, and they sound like they were longer than a normal dental x-ray, so a high estimate would be 50 mrem each, total of 100 mrem extra wouldn't be unreasonable.

The federal law limits fetal exposure to 500 mrem total, which has been shown to be a low enough number to have very little effect on a fetus. So you're not pregnant for the whole year, only 9 months, so your average natural dose would be about 270 mrem for those 9 months, and with a high estimate for those dental x-rays at 100 mrem, you're still only at 370 mrem for the fetus, which is a safe amount.

Also, just to help you feel more comfortable with my calculations and familiarity with radiological dose, I am a nuclear power plant worker who wears dosimetry to track my dose every day, and I've had 40 mrem extra from work during my pregnancy. I have also had two x-rays done on my hand during my pregnancy because I broke my finger last August.

Conclusion: you should be fine, but let future x-ray techs know you're pregnant :)
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Avatar universal
Well not in this xray room, and I forgot I was rushing frustrated under stress and was just trying to get out asap.
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561393 tn?1320962815
why in the world wouldn't you tell them that you are pregnant.. normally in any x-ray room there are posters stating if you are pregnant let the techs know...
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Avatar universal
No they didnt know. For one of the xrays I was covered and was standing with a machine going around my head however for the other one I wasn't covered and had a similar machine used
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1901977 tn?1333991726
Did they know you were pregnant? Usually they'll double-shield you to protect the baby.
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