 Every year, doctors cost an estimated 29,000 cancers, dosing patients with x-rays during CAT scans. What about dentists? 100 million Americans are exposed to dental x-rays every year. But what about the lead-8-bren and thyroid shield? Doesn't that cover up all your vital organs? All your vital organs except one called the brain, dental x-rays, and risk of meningioma. The objective of this study was to examine the association between dental x-rays, the most common artificial source of ionizing radiation, and the risk of intracranial meningioma, the most common type of brain tumor in the United States. They found that those who report ever having a bite-wing x-ray had about twice the odds of a brain tumor, and those that got a panoramic series of full-mouth x-rays before age 10 had nearly five times the odds. So does that mean dental x-rays cause brain tumors? Well, the jury is still out. Just because dental x-rays are associated with brain tumors, argued a group of dental radiologists, doesn't necessarily mean the x-rays cause the brain tumors. Maybe brain tumors cause the x-rays. Seriously, they criticized the paper for not entertaining alternative explanations, such as the facial pain that can be caused by brain tumors triggering the need for dental radiographs, meaning you go to your dentist because your face hurts and your dentist orders some x-rays that'll either of you know could have been a brain tumor all along, or maybe there's a third variable, such as head trauma, resulting in both additional x-rays and brain tumors. Getting hidden ahead as a kid actually increases your risk of developing a brain tumor, and getting hidden ahead is also a good way to end up in a dentist's chair getting x-rays for broken teeth. While more research is being done, the bottom line is, as with all sources of artificial ionizing radiation, considered use of this modifiable risk factor may be a benefit to patients. This means that the dentist should consider carefully the justification for every exposure. This means dentists should not prescribe routine dental x-rays at preset intervals for all patients, like every six months, every year, whatever. Because who says the official recommendation of the American Dental Association? Dentists should not prescribe routine dental x-rays at preset intervals. There's little evidence to support irradiating people looking at all the teeth in search of hidden problems and asymptomatic patients. Accordingly, doctors should select patients wise. They only take x-rays when there is a patient-specific reason to believe there's a reasonable expectation the x-rays will offer unique information influencing diagnosis or treatment.