I am in school to learn to take x-rays, have been for over a year now. Today I had to take a chest x-ray of a woman that needed some medicine, wanted her insurance to pay for it, the company which required the study before allowing the medicine. It was for rheumatoid arthritis, the medicine was. She expressed concern for the radiation dose she would receive, and when it was done the tech I was with suggested we do another lateral picture of her chest. She refused, and asked me how long I had been taking x-rays.

I know a little about x-ray doses, because we are supposed to know the shit as techs, of course. I don't know a lot about it though, so I decided to look things up.

Some sources give doses in sieverts, some in rads, some in rem.

Some factors:
1 Sv (sievert) = 100 rem (radiation equivalent man)
1 mSv = 0.001 Sv
1 mSv = 100 mrem


Some stats here.
More here.
Unit explanation here.

So, according to some sources, a chest x-ray gives a person the same amount of radiation they receive every day times ten, or ten days worth. A CT of the chest gives 80 times, or 3 years worth. I had read somewhere a few years ago it was much higher, over 1000 times. I will have to dig some more to satisfy my curiosity....

Back to the patient. She was a bitch, of course. She needed medicine for RA, and wanted someone else to pay for it. Her problems likely stemmed from the fact that she was fat, which was partly to blame for the shitty x-rays we got. Patients like this one are a good argument against socialized medicine. If the government raises taxes for free health care for all, people like this will feel entitled to live as they please and expect the wonders of modern medicine to fix things, with taxpayers picking up the tab.