Improving health literacy: informed decision-making rather than informed consent for CT scans in children.

摘要

Health literacy is described as "The degree to which individuals have the capacity to obtain, process, and understand basic health information and services needed to make appropriate decisions" [1]. In the paper titled "What physicians think about the need for informed consent for cancer risk with low-dose radiation," the authors contend that physicians are aware of the risk of cancer with low-dose radiation examinations and that radiology departments should consider obtaining informed consent from patients undergoing radiation-based low-dose examinations [2]. The paper makes a compelling argument based on scientific reports from governmental agencies and multiple scientific papers that provide a strong rationale based on the extrapolated data using the linear nonthreshold theory of radiation-induced cancer from Hiroshima after the atomic bomb [3].