Medical Imaging and Pediatric and Adolescent Hematologic Cancer Risk

Assessing the risk of radiation-induced hematologic cancer from medical imaging in children and adolescents might support informed decisions on the use of imaging.

We followed a retrospective cohort of 3,724,623 children born between 1996 and 2016 in six U.S. health care systems and Ontario, Canada, until the earliest of cancer or benign-tumor diagnosis, death, end of health care coverage, an age of 21 years, or December 31, 2017. Radiation doses to active bone marrow from medical imaging were quantified. Associations between hematologic cancers and cumulative radiation exposure (vs. no exposure), with a lag of 6 months, were estimated with the use of continuous-time hazards models.