Infant X-Ray question

[BabyMine]

BIL emailed me and told me his 3.5yo needs a chest x-ray and was told he has to keep her away from her 4 month old baby brother for 24 hours becasue of the radiation. Is this accurate becasue I have never heard this and I had x-rays when my kids were that young.

[JBaxter]

never heard that either.

[egoldber]

Not for a simple chest Xray.

[lhafer]

Not that I know of for an xray. You don't "exude" radiation from your body after an xray - your body just absorbs it.

The only time I can think of to keep people away from something like that is Chemo/Radiation. With this, you DO exude radiation and certain precautions have to be taken.

[hillview]

Not that I know of for an xray. You don't "exude" radiation from your body after an xray - your body just absorbs it.

The only time I can think of to keep people away from something like that is Chemo/Radiation. With this, you DO exude radiation and certain precautions have to be taken.
:yeahthat:
Yeah and I think some scans with radioactive dye (maybe PET scans with dye)? Never heard of that with x-ray.
/hillary

[JTsMom]

Never heard that either, and DS1 has had multiple chest X-rays.

[carolinamama]

I've never heard of that. DS1 had to have an x-ray of his head as an infant. It made me nervous so I asked around at work (hospital) what other peds thought about it before I had it done. They all assured me that the amount of radiation from a single xray is quite low, much different than a ct scan, and it wouldn't be a big deal. As others have said, you don't give off radiation after an xray.

[bcafe]

He does not need to keep the baby away from the sibling. If the 3.5 year old was having a Nuclear Medicine test, the child would be radioactive, however, even then the baby would not need to be kept away as the amount of radioactivity given to a child is very small.

[jerigirl]

Not for a simple chest Xray.

:yeahthat:

[s7714]

Uh no, don't think so. My older DD had panels of x-rays on her entire body done when she was about 3 and was back to playing with her baby sister within an hour of finishing. I've only heard about avoiding people after radiation treatment for things like thyroid cancer, never from traditional x-rays!

[cucaw30]

Not that I am a medical professional, but this sounds crazy to me! My DS2 spent 3 1/2 months in the NICU. He was having chest x-rays done on almost a daily basis for a while, especially at the beginning when he was on the vent. At this time, he weighed about 2 lbs. This was common practice in our NICU. It makes no sense to me that they would be doing x-rays on such tiny babies constantly and that it would not be okay for an older, healthy baby to be around an older child, who got the x-ray.

[BabyMine]

She is having it done because she tested positive for TBs. I am spelling it wrong because he is doing searches and I don't want him to find this and know my screen name. He knows I post here.

I didn't think so and DH couldn't understand why his pediatrician told him that or why he believed it. M had a lot of X-rays from birth - 2yo and I had never heard that nor would it make sense.

[MamaSnoo]

Maybe they wanted BIL to keep the older child away from the baby for a period of time after the x-ray so that they could get the result and be sure that the problem you mentioned would not be contagious to the baby?

I have never heard of keeping a child away from others after a simple x-ray. DD had an x-ray for a different reason around age 6 mos, and there were no special precautions.